


Sleight of Hand

by AuroraWest



Series: it's not going to matter if we fall down twice [1]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Brodinsons even though Thor isn't there, Cancer, Fix-It of Sorts, Flashbacks, Frenemies, Gen, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Lives, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Multiverse, POV Loki (Marvel), Past One-Sided Attraction, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Rivals to Frenemies, Sanctum Sanctorum (Marvel), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest
Summary: The Time Heist sends ripples through the past, present, and future. It also allows a certain God of Mischief a second chance at life (or is it a fourth?) through the most unlikely means possible: a version of himself from another dimension.So Loki lived. Loki survived Thanos, The Statesman, and a parallel universe. Now it's 2023 and the world has moved on without him. And the worst part is...The worst part is that he's trapped at the New York Sanctum with that second-rate, amateur wizard, Doctor Stephen Strange.
Relationships: Jane Foster & Loki, Loki & Stephen Strange, Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Series: it's not going to matter if we fall down twice [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680754
Comments: 163
Kudos: 247





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> While this fic isn't what I'd call a sequel to my fic [Do No Harm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724590/chapters/54303919), they both take place in my fic universe. You don't have to read Do No Harm to understand Sleight of Hand, and this story was written to be the first in my Loki Lives Post-Endgame series. Do No Harm gives the background of how the Loki of the other universe comes to save the Loki of _this_ story. So I'll always plug it, but it's not required reading.
> 
> Huge thanks to my beta, [mareebird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareebird/pseuds/mareebird), for all her wonderful advice on this!

_Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable._

L. Frank Baum, _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_

The worst part—and this situation was nothing but worst parts—was the room he’d been given.

In this whole huge house, the New York Sanctum Sanctorum, apparently the _only_ free bedroom was in the attic. There was a twin bed that was barely long enough for him, boxes full of junk, several locked trunks, and one dusty curio cabinet filled with glass rabbit figurines. This left a navigable path of floor space that was, frankly, hardly worthy of the term ‘navigable,’ and if he said he hadn’t slammed his foot into the corner of one of the trunks several times since arriving, he’d be lying. Granted, lying was one of his talents.

The window didn’t seem to shut properly, either. He could hear everything from the street below—car horns blaring, ambulances, police, the blast of the fire truck klaxon every time it left the nearby station. The pneumatic hiss and tire squeal of the 55 (he hated that he had learned the bus route), the cacophonous banging of garbage day, that _one_ manhole cover right outside that wasn’t set right, so that every time a car drove over it, it sounded like the syncopated heartbeat of some machine, maybe a relic of the humans’ Industrial Revolution. There was a Chinese takeout place in the building next door and the smell of grease was omnipresent—but just in _his_ room. Nowhere else in the house. And the neighbors had a tendency towards loud roof parties, which might have been fun, had he been invited. And again, only _his_ room seemed exposed to the noise and the smell of cigarette and/or cannabis smoke.

Still. At least he wasn’t dead.

Loki tossed his current favorite toy into the air and caught it, wishing the spring in the middle of his mattress wasn’t digging into his spine. Experience had taught him that there was no position he could shift or contort into that would alleviate the discomfort. He tossed the piece of metal again and caught it, wrapping his fingers around it. He’d found the thing downstairs in one of Strange’s cupboards. Most of the cupboards were locked in the house, so he assumed that whatever the object was was both harmless and of absolutely no value. It looked like a compass, but when he pried it open (the hinges were rusted practically shut), it clearly wasn’t. There was a needle, but it didn’t move, and he didn’t know what the symbols around the dial meant. He could feel power in it, just like he could feel power everywhere in this second-rate sorcerer’s house, but what it was for, or what it had _once_ been for, was a mystery.

Or maybe he just didn’t know how to use it. Maybe Strange had left it accessible as a test, or maybe he assumed Loki wouldn’t be able to work out how to make it do anything. Both rankled, the latter obviously more so. He tossed it again and made a face. Curse Strange, curse this house and curse the emotional blackmail that had kept him here, locked up, useless, whiling away his time reading what passed for literature on Earth and trying to discern the function of an old, rusty piece of junk that for all he knew was nothing more than a cheap souvenir from some sort of Earth-wizard tourist trap. He hated it.

He. Hated. It.

There was a sound downstairs and he pushed himself up. Was Strange back? Or was it Wong? Did it matter? He was in the mood to rage at someone and he didn’t much care who it was. He stood up, tossed the compass, or whatever it was, onto the bed, and stepped over a box to get to the door.


	2. Chapter 2

Wait.

First, a little background.

The thing was, Loki had been dead. He’d made his choice, throwing his lot in with Thor for good. He’d returned to Asgard, fought his sister, and initiated Ragnarok. He’d stood at his brother’s side, Prince of Asgard, second-in-command to Thor’s King of Asgard. And he’d spent ten weeks on _The Statesman_ , mending his relationship with Thor, the two of them picking their way back towards the bond they’d had once.

No, that wasn’t right. They were picking their way towards a new bond, one that acknowledged the pain and hurt on both sides. The broken promises and betrayals. The wounds that had been inflicted both intentionally and not. Loki wasn’t sure if those wounds, built up over centuries, scars on top of scars, had begun to heal, but it had been a start. It had been difficult, but worthwhile.

Ten weeks. They’d been some of the happiest of Loki’s life.

And then Thanos had come for the Tesseract.

Thor had ordered Loki and the Valkyrie to evacuate as many people as they could and then to get off _The Statesman_ , to head to Earth, to run and not look back. He was king; he’d hold Thanos off as long as he could with Heimdall. Their people would need leaders when they got to Earth and Loki and Brunnhilde were the best ones for the job.

Well. Loki had done the first part. He’d already tried being a leader, anyway. It had gotten boring.

“We can’t take any more in here,” the Valkyrie had said, her face streaked with soot, blood running down her cheek from a cut beneath her eye. “Let’s go.”

Loki had looked through the shuttle door into the interior, packed with sobbing Asgardian refugees, and he’d said, “Get them to Earth. Whatever happens, just get them there.”

She’d looked exasperated. “Get in. Thor said—”

“I know what Thor said.” Loki gave her a meaningful look. “Just go.”

She stared at him. Then she rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, Your Highness. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

With a twitch of a smile, he’d said, “Now, you _know_ I can’t promise that.”

She’d reached out and gripped his shoulder, then she was gone, the shuttle door lensing shut behind her.

They’d tried, Thor and he and Heimdall. They’d fought to the last. Heimdall had gone down first. Then Thor had been wounded—badly—and Loki had found himself surrounded. And since he had a few contingencies left before the final contingency, he’d put up his hands in surrender, staring at his brother lying defeated on the deck and wishing desperately, more than he had for anything in his life, that things could have been different. His heart, which he hadn’t thought could break any more, did.

Of course he gave up the Tesseract for Thor. Of course he did. The truth was, he’d spent most of his life willing to do anything for his older brother. The Tesseract was nothing compared to his family, the only family he had left. The half of the universe that Thanos would wipe from existence, if he united all the Infinity Stones, was _nothing_. He may have been the worst brother, but at least he’d still be worthy of the word.

But in his heart, his cracked and patched and re-cracked and re-patched heart, he knew he was going to die. And if he was going to die, he was going to die trying to kill Thanos.

This was where things got…strange. Which wasn’t a pun but could have been, further down the gnarled thread of events. Because in one timeline, the actual, main timeline of his life, Thor’s life, every life of everyone he’d ever known, he’d died. And that, obviously, would have been the end of him.

Except he didn’t remember any of that. Because five years after his death, the Avengers had gone back in time to collect the Infinity Stones for themselves to undo Thanos’s ‘universe correction.’ Only they’d messed up (surprise!), and in 2012, instead of being taken back to Asgard to face judgement, Loki had escaped New York with the Tesseract. That Loki was both him—and very definitely not him. _That_ Loki had gone off and lived his life. Some life, anyway. Loki—the Loki that was currently getting a crick in his neck and a bone bruise on his spine from the uncomfortable mattress he was lying on—had no way of knowing what most of that life had looked like.

At least, Loki assumed that other version of himself had gone off and lived. Grown. Matured. Because he remembered his own state of mind after his capture at the hands of the Avengers. Post-Hulk-smash. Anticipating his father’s wrath in Asgard. Knowing he’d burned every bridge between himself and Thor, wondering if he’d done the same thing with his mother. Feeling like a fog had been slowly parting in his brain, which time and retrospect had made him realize was likely the effect of the Mind Stone in the scepter that Thanos had been so happy to let him have.

The point was, he wasn’t in what you might call a good mental state at that point in his life.

So for _that_ Loki to do what he’d done, there had to have been some living. Loki didn’t know everything he’d done in the years leading up to the decision he’d made, only that he’d held himself responsible for the damage he’d caused. Obviously, he’d been right about having caused the damage. If anything was true, it was that ruin and devastation followed Loki.

So in 2018, while the Hulk fought Thanos (and lost), someone grabbed Loki’s arm and pulled him into the shadows beneath a smoldering bulkhead, held a knife to his throat, and said, “Don’t talk, just listen to me.”

As it was difficult to speak with a blade pressing against your windpipe, and moreover, as he was staring into his own eyes, he stayed silent.

His double held up the Tesseract and Loki had instinctively known it was different than the one he’d just tossed aside to shield his brother. “Take this,” his double had said. “Someone needs to put it back where it belongs. Go to New York City, when Stark and the Secretary got into that ridiculous pissing match about whether Asgard or the humans were getting the Tesseract and me. Us. Get it back in the case so Thor can do everything the way it happened for you.” There was a haunted look on his face, but as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. It was a deeply disorienting experience to see his own emotional mask slip and reposition itself.

He removed the knife from his throat—yes, confusing, someday he’d need to figure out how to tell this story at dinner parties—and Loki had immediately hissed, “ _What?_ Who are you and why the hel should I listen to you?”

Which was probably why his other self had opened with the knife to the throat.

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’m _you_ , another version of you, at least, and we don’t have time for the whole ‘I tell you something only _we_ would know.’ Anyway, you and I both know anything like that can be tortured out of someone.”

True.

For a second time he pushed the Tesseract at Loki’s hands. “Take it. Strange is waiting. You’ll need him.” At Loki’s increasingly flabbergasted expression, he’d sighed again and said, “Look, you’re fixing the mess I made. And I’m dying for you. Instead of you. I suppose it’s still _for_ our idiot brother. I’m probably getting the better end of the deal. Sorry.”

Over on the other side of the bulkhead, there was an ominous silence. This was absolute madness. Under no conceivable circumstances could he possibly be speaking to a version of himself from some sort of alternate reality. Though he supposed the fact that he’d realized that was exactly what was happening was proof that he _could_ conceive of such a circumstance. So all he said was, “I can’t abandon him.”

“You’re not,” his other self said. “You didn’t. That’s the problem. Well, one of many problems. That’s why I’m _here_. This is better for everyone, believe me. You’d be more help to Thor alive.”

But Loki had shaken his head and said, “That may be. But no.” He’d saved himself at the expense of the people he loved too many times. This wouldn’t be one of them.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” his double had said under his breath. Then, in the same motion, he let go of the Tesseract, leaving Loki to catch it (instinct and habit), and stabbed him in the side. The Tesseract opened up a portal and swallowed him before he had the chance to snarl, _what happened to being more help to Thor_ **alive** _?_

With a hard thump, he found himself sprawled on brickwork that looked distinctly familiar. He raised his head. Central Park. This was where Thor had used the Tesseract to bring him back to Asgard years ago. The fact that no one was screaming and calling for the Avengers was his first clue that it was _not_ 2012.

He propped himself up on an elbow, wincing as pain lanced through his side. At least when he told this story at dinner parties, it already had a punchline. _And_ **then** _, can you believe it, the version of me from the alternate reality stabbed me! You know, I’m well aware I’ve always had a self-destructive streak, but I managed to surprise myself with that. Quite literally._

Grunting in pain, he reached for the knife jammed between his ribs, but then a voice said from above him, “You really shouldn’t take that out. You’ll just lose more blood.” Boots, and then a hand, appeared in Loki’s field of vision, and he looked up. There was a man standing in front of him, who said, “Doctor Stephen Strange.”

“We’ve met,” Loki snarled.

Surprise flickered across Strange’s face, but all he said was, “Technically, _we_ haven’t. I take it that…well, you’re here, and he’s not, so I suppose he managed to do it.” Was that _grief_ on Strange’s face? He was looking at Loki like he’d just lost something very dear to him, and Loki felt, despite the absence of all evidence, that he was a grim reminder of whatever it was. Where _was_ he? What was going on?

Lowering his hand further, Strange said, “C’mon. You have a lot to catch up on, not to mention work to do.”

Loki looked at the offered hand, then ignored it and heaved himself to his feet. He grabbed the dagger by its hilt and yanked it out. With effort, he kept his expression neutral, even as the spurt of blood that followed the blade’s removal leaked down his side in a slow, wet slide, soaking the undershirt he wore under all the Sakaaran leather. The Tesseract, he realized, was still clenched in his other hand.

Strange looked at him, looked at the knife in his hand, then shook his head and sighed. “Okay, so we’re going to do this the hard way.” He made a motion with his hand, but Loki was ready for him this time, flicking his fingers so that a line of green flickered from his head to his feet. Something brushed past the top of his head. That would be the spell that Strange had attempted to hit him with before he’d deflected it.

“Don’t try that again,” Loki said dangerously. He flipped the knife in his hand around, holding it at the ready.

People walking by were starting to stare, though not as much as Loki would have thought. One would think that seeing a portal open and a battered, bloodied man fall out would arouse more interest. A twinge of unease had gone through him at that. Bystanders who didn’t bat an eye at bizarre occurrences generally came to that attitude through familiarity with multiple bizarre occurrences.

Holding out a hand, as though Loki was a skittish horse that needed calming, Strange said, “I know you’re confused and this is a lot to take in, but I’m not your enemy. If you come with me, we can get you some medical attention for that?”

Loki looked around, his breath coming shorter than he would have liked, his mind feeling like it was being torn apart in a thousand directions. He was in a different universe than his own. Somehow, he knew that. Everything felt just very slightly _off_ here, from the way the people weren’t concerned about his dramatic entrance, to the quietness of the terrace, even to the way the bricks looked on the ground. Strange had said they’d never met.

Madness.

Straightening up, relaxing just a bit, and spinning his knife so that he could slide it back up his sleeve, Loki said, “I’m Asgardian. I don’t need medical attention for this.” He glanced at the Tesseract in his other hand and vanished it. Strange, to his credit, didn’t ask where it had gone. “I _do_ want to know what’s going on, though. And—” He hesitated. “Where and when, I am.”

Another expression of grief flickered across Strange’s face. Deep, soul-crushing grief. But then he took a breath and it vanished again. “September 15, 2018. About six months later than where you just came from. But time travel aside…you’re definitely _not_ in Kansas anymore.”

Loki wrinkled his nose in distaste. “I don’t understand that reference,” he said, even though he did, because the movie had been on in the community room the first, and only, time that he’d visited Odin in Shady Acres Care Home. “The man behind the curtain,” Odin had said distantly, as Loki had perched on a chair next to him, stiff and deeply uncomfortable.

Smiling like he knew Loki was lying, Strange said, “Right. The Asgardian thing. Anyway, come with me.”

It would be the absolute height of foolishness to do what this man said. Go with him? For all Loki knew, this was some sort of trap. Though it seemed like a lot of trouble to go through for the humans just to trap him on Earth, especially when Thanos had been about to do the job for them. Er, assuming the job had been to kill him.

That actually made even _less_ sense than the idea of him being in a parallel universe. Loki took a breath and nodded, but before he moved, he said, though it pained him to be so forthright with his emotions, “My brother—”

“Will be fine,” Strange said. “Well, he’ll live.”

Those were two very different things, but Loki would take it for the moment. With a jerk of his head, he followed Strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a comment if you're enjoying this! I love to know what people think!
> 
> You should also come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/)! I like to talk about Loki.


	3. Chapter 3

Anyway, there was more—a lot more—but it was a different story. _That_ story ended with Loki stopping the version of himself in that other universe from absconding with the Tesseract in 2012. Doing so had erased that branching reality and everyone in it. And he’d ended up in his own reality, in 2023, under the roof of a different 177A Bleecker Street, with a different Stephen Strange. Or rather, the Stephen Strange that he’d known in the first place, thanks to a pocket dimension and falling for thirty minutes.

He liked his own universe’s Strange a lot less.

Loki turned the doorknob and swung the door open. The hinges squealed, announcing to the entire house that he’d emerged from the attic. If Strange said that one more time, Loki would kill him. He’d done it before—“He emerges,” dryly, with enough mockery shaded in to be offensive. As though the reason Loki was in this house at all wasn’t entirely down to him.

In the other universe, over time, he’d come to want to help _that_ Strange. But in his own universe, the one Loki belonged in, with _The Statesman_ and Thanos and Ragnarok and a brother that he’d been mending his relationship with, he wanted nothing to do with the wizard. Here, Strange was so irritating, so insufferable, _so_ convinced of his own moral certitude. It was amazing how different two people could be, when they were, quite literally, the same person. They were separated by a single act: in one universe, after the Battle of New York, Loki had been taken back to Asgard in chains. And in another, he’d stolen the Tesseract. It had changed everything. It had allowed Loki a second chance at life, but at what cost?

He grit his teeth. Norns, he wished he could leave. He wished he could set fire to everything in this stupid magical house and walk out the door and never lay eyes on Stephen Strange or the Sanctum ever again. But he couldn’t, could he? Strange had made that quite clear. 

He stood on the landing outside his room, fingers resting on the railing. It was much quieter, even here, as though the noise that came in through his window hit an invisible barrier at the threshold to the door. One of many enchantments on the Sanctum—and it was extremely difficult not to feel that his room had been purposefully left out of it just to wind him up. Or perhaps that was just why they’d put him there. It amounted to the same thing. Maybe they put all their less-than-welcome houseguests there.

Now, _there_ was a feeling he was used to. Not being welcome. Being excluded. The same theme that played out over and over and over again in his life. Things had been different on _The Statesman._ There, with Thor and the Valkyrie, the remnants of his people, hel, even the Sakaaran gladiators and the Hulk, he’d felt like he belonged for maybe the first time ever. At least, he’d been getting there. But of course, it had all fallen apart, due to the not insubstantial hand that he’d played in things. That was another feeling he was used to, to be perfectly honest.

He certainly hadn’t belonged in the other universe, either, but at least he’d found friendship there, and… Well, friendship. Even if it went hand in hand with his penchant for wanting the unobtainable. But more than that, he’d had a _purpose_ there. Something to do. A goal to work towards, so that his feelings of displacement could be pushed aside.

Not here. He didn’t know what Strange hoped to achieve by keeping him here. The man had once trapped him in a pocket universe because he thought he was a threat to Earth, after all. Never mind that Loki’s interest in causing trouble on Earth had evaporated long ago. And left to his own devices, he never would have had designs on it in the first place. It seemed ridiculous now. Why had he ever wanted to rule this place? But his mind had been odd. Toxic. Full of thoughts that were his, or had been his at some point. But he hadn’t felt in complete control of them. It was like he’d been sitting at the controls of a ship, but someone else was piloting, and occasionally he happened to choose the same direction. Even a broken clock was right twice a day. It had given him the illusion of control over his own mind, when he recognized now that he’d had anything but.

But Loki didn’t think Strange was keeping him confined because he feared Loki was a danger to Earth. He thought it was probably exactly what Strange kept telling him. The problem was, Loki didn’t care.

Clenching a fist, he stalked past the Oculus and rattled down the steps until he arrived at the massive central staircase that led down to the foyer. Strange was standing at one side of the room next to a tall, thin table, flipping through a handful of envelopes, but he glanced up as Loki approached. “Oh good,” Loki said, “it’s you. You know, I don’t think your lackey is relaying my complaints to you.”

Strange looked at him for a second longer, then went back to flipping through his mail. “It might be because you keep referring to him as my ‘lackey’—which is apparently one of the nicer things you’ve called him.”

Sneering delicately, Loki said, “Your hurt feelings aren’t any of my concern.”

“Uh huh. You’ve made that pretty clear.” Strange tossed the mail on the table and tried that obnoxious teleportation trick of his—but this time, for the first time, Loki was ready for it. He didn’t know how it worked because Strange’s magic was different than his, but he’d figured out a way to stop himself from being towed along in the wizard’s wake. It was hard to put it into words, just like most magic, but when he felt the tug of the spell, the best way he could describe what he was doing was sinking pylons of himself into the ground around him, so he was anchored to that spot. When Strange tried to teleport them both, Loki was as immovable as Thor’s destroyed hammer.

Strange looked like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. But he recovered quickly, smiling a little. “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out how to do that.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Loki said.

Holding up his hands, Strange said, “Okay. Let’s talk. But do you mind if we do it in the study? I need to sit down with a cup of tea; I’m exhausted. Interdimensional squid monsters don’t just defeat themselves.” Said cup of tea appeared in his hand, and then he asked, “Want one?”

Though Loki absolutely hated the idea of being given anything by this odious man, he _did_ feel like a cup of tea. After he nodded stiffly, another steaming cup appeared on the table next to the pile of mail. Strange gestured to it and Loki reluctantly retrieved it, then followed Strange into the study.

On one of his first mornings here, Strange had asked him, “Tea? Or do you prefer beer?”

“It’s eight o’clock in the bloody morning,” Loki had spat. When Strange had kept staring at him questioningly, he’d growled, “Tea.”

The study looked comfortable. Not that Loki would know, since he’d mostly stayed away from it, not to mention every other room in the house. “Have a seat,” Strange said, gesturing to one of the armchairs as he sank down in the other. Loki stayed on his feet, his hands wrapped around the cup.

There was a long silence. Somewhere, a clock was ticking. It seemed loud in this huge, empty house, full of hard surfaces and dust and power. Which made him miss the palace on Asgard. Despite its size, it had never seemed empty or hard. 

Strange sipped at his tea. “Did you have a good day?”

That made Loki’s eyes flick to him and narrow. “Oh, yes, an absolute _peach_ of a day.” Strange shrugged, and Loki did his best not to fling the still steaming cup of tea at his face. His voice tight with anger, he said, “I’m sick and tired of being locked up here, _wizard_. I’m sick and tired of being in that _room_ , wasting time. I’m sick and tired of _you_ telling me that it’s for the good of the universe for me to rot in this house.” He stopped, realizing his hand was clenched so tightly around the cup that hairline cracks were appearing in it. Quickly, he downed the tea. It was still too hot and it burned his throat, and that made him angrier. So he vanished the cup. He was going to make Strange ask where it was, too.

Strange was silent. Then, he asked, “Are you done?”

“Did you want to hear more?”

Strange set his tea down on a table next to the chair. “I think I get the general idea. You know you’re not confined to that room, right? You’re free to go anywhere in the house.”

With a snort, Loki replied, “And trip one of your booby traps? I don’t think so.”

Calmly, Strange said, “Don’t get into anything you’re not supposed to, and you won’t.”

“And _how_ , pray tell, am I supposed to know what I’m allowed to touch and what I’m not?” Loki snarled. His pride, more than any actual body part, was still wounded from the day three weeks ago when he’d tried to open a cabinet and been knocked on his backside by the protective spell.

Still maddeningly calm, Strange said, “You’re a _wizard_ , aren’t you?”

Narrowing his eyes, Loki replied, “Master of Magic.”

“Right,” Strange said. He very clearly hadn’t needed to be reminded. The daggers strapped to Loki’s forearms had never seemed so tempting. “Look,” Strange said, “we’ve been over this. I’m sorry about keeping you here, but this is the way it has to be.”

Clenching his fists, Loki said, “It _has_ to be this way, does it? I know you can look into the future, so tell me why, exactly, the universe’s fate hinges on me being stuck in this house. It seems just a _bit_ unlikely.”

Strange steepled his fingers. They didn’t shake as much when he did it. Ignoring the part about looking into the future, which Loki was well aware he couldn’t do without the Time Stone, he said, “If you’re referring to the fact that I used the Time Stone to see if we could beat Thanos, yeah. I looked past that moment to make sure there wasn’t some kind of world-ending, Avengers-level event coming right after it. I saw possibilities.” He narrowed his eyes at Loki. “What I saw was that it’s _better_ for the universe for you to be here. I wouldn’t presume to tell you the fate of everything rests on you crashing in the attic room. But I can’t let you leave. There’s too much probability that millions of lives are at stake.”

“What do I care for millions of lives when my brother—” Loki paused and took several breaths, then finished, “—when my brother needs a kick in the arse, preferably from me?”

“That’s sweet,” Strange said dryly. “I hope he can feel the love, even if he thinks it’s coming from beyond the grave.”

Baring his teeth, Loki snarled, “I didn’t ask for this. I was _ready_ to die. _You_ lot are the ones that messed up the fabric of space and time. The only reason I’m here at all is because someone let a group of rank amateurs loose in something they knew nothing about and couldn’t _possibly_ hope to understand the ramifications of. So if my presence here is such a problem, such a wrench in the continued existence of the universe, blame _them_. I’d tell you to take it up with your counterpart in the other timeline, but—oh yes, I had to erase it from existence, so I suppose you’ll never know why he was so adamant that I be sent _here_ , to you, in _this_ particular year.”

_Go rescue your brother_ , was what that version of Stephen Strange had said, actually, before Loki had walked away, cast a glamor over himself, and stopped the chain of events that had led to his previous self stealing the Tesseract. The thought made his chest hurt. Millions of lives were at stake? He’d already wiped out trillions, including some that he cared about very much. But his brother was here, not there. Thor had been dead in the other universe. And in the end, Thor was always going to be the most important thing.

Strange’s face hadn’t changed. “Is there more you’d like to say?” he asked. Loki ground his teeth together. Taking advantage of his white-lipped, angry silence, Strange went on, “You know, I couldn’t keep you here if you really wanted to leave. You stay because you think what I’ve told you is true.”

With a bark of laughter, Loki said, “What can I do but assume it’s true? Do you _know_ what I’ve been through?”

“Only what you’ve told me,” Strange said. “I’m sure it hasn’t been easy.”

Putting a hand over his heart, Loki said, “Your sympathy means _so_ much.”

Strange regarded him. “Loki. I’m not keeping you here because I have some sort of vendetta against you.”

Responding to this seemed like a way to trap him into admitting he was being childish, so Loki didn’t.

With a sigh, Strange said, “Your brother has things to do and he needs to do them without you. You can’t help him right now. That’s what I’ve seen. There are a lot of possible outcomes, but in most of them, you staying out of Thor’s life right now is best for everyone.”

Though there was no way for Strange to possibly know this, this hurt almost more than anything he’d experienced over the past several months, or five years, or however long it had been. It bore too much resemblance to Thor’s casual dismissal of him on Sakaar, when all he’d wanted, all he’d _ever_ wanted, was to be needed and valued.

That, though, had galvanized him to change. Or at least, to change in a way he hadn’t tried changing yet.

This…didn’t.

A shockwave of raw, screaming hurt and frustration and rage rolled off him, slamming into everything in the room, shattering glass and wood and flinging the lighter furniture back. Strange grabbed the arms of his chair, looking alarmed as it rocked backwards, and then he waved his hands in the air. Orange symbols flowed from them, flaring, and then dissipated. Anything that was still airborne stopped, suspended above the ground, before Strange flicked a hand and reversed his belongings’ trajectories.

Loki’s chest was heaving. He hated himself for losing control. He hated Strange for _making_ him lose control. _Do you think_ , he wanted to say, to snarl, to scream, _that I don’t_ know _my brother doesn’t need me?_

After everything settled into place, Strange looked at him and said dryly, “Looks like I hit a sore spot.”

The daggers came out, appearing in Loki’s hands as though he’d grabbed them from thin air. And what? What was he going to do? Pointing with one blade, his teeth bared in anger, he growled, “ _Shut. Up._ ” His fingers clenched around the hilt of the dagger and he said, his voice shaking with fury, “I would rather be trapped in your pocket universe, falling into infinite _blackness_ , then have to look at your insufferable face and listen to your smug, sanctimonious, pedantic explanations about why I’m here for _one—more—SECOND_.”

Folding his hands in his lap and looking at them, Strange said, “That can be arranged.”

“Then do it,” Loki said, stepping forward, the dagger still leveled at Strange’s face. “You’ve wanted to since day one. Put your money where your mouth is, s _orcerer_.”

Strange looked up at him. For a minute, maybe two, they held each other’s gazes. Loki didn’t lower his knife. If he could get there in time, he could sink the point into Strange’s throat. _If_ he could get there in time.

Somehow, that felt familiar, like déjà vu. Like an echo from another life. Or like an echo from his own life, but a part which he hadn’t lived.

Loki lowered the blade to his side and sagged. “Do it, Strange,” he said, his voice defeated. “I promise I’ll only blame you a little bit.”

Strange kept looking at him. “Yeah, I’m not going to, but your permission’s noted.” He tilted his head, then said, “You know…you might have a point. Not about the pocket universe. But about being cooped up. It’s probably bad luck or something to keep a god under house arrest, even here.”

With a flick of Loki’s fingers, the daggers vanished, their weight back on his forearms. Now that he’d put them away, Loki knew he’d never have used them on Strange. Partly because—truly—he’d never been a killer, not until his fall from grace. And partly because the problem was not that he found Strange’s face insufferable, but because he _didn’t_ , but this was the wrong Strange. “I’m listening,” he said warily.

Strange got to his feet, walking around the room and magically cleaning up the mess Loki had made of it. For half a second, he considered offering to help, but decided against it before the thought had fully formed. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this,” Strange said. “I’m breaking every patient confidentiality law on the books.”

“Then _please_ don’t feel compelled to,” Loki said, knowing it sounded petulant. Whatever he’d expected Strange to say, it certainly hadn’t begun this way.

Ignoring this, Strange said, “I was at the hospital today—”

“Why?” Loki interrupted, staring pointedly at Strange’s trembling hands. “Don’t tell me they’re letting you cut people open?”

A muscle twitched in Strange’s face. Ah, good, it _was_ possible to make that smarmy exterior crack. “I thought you said you were listening.” Loki held his hands up and Strange went on, “I was visiting a friend. While I was there, I walked by a room that listed the occupant as Jane Foster.”

Loki started and cursed himself for doing it.

“Someone you know?” Strange asked.

Raising an eyebrow, Loki said, “An acquaintance.”

“Uh huh.” Strange looked amused. “Friend of Thor’s, right?” When Loki shrugged, Strange’s face sobered. “I looked at her records. Another broken rule, by the way. Same Jane Foster. She’s dying.”

With another shrug, Loki said, “Of course she’s dying. You humans are in a perpetual state of mortality. It’s just what you _do_.”

“She’s terminally ill,” Strange said. “She has weeks. _Maybe_ a couple months, if she gets really lucky.”

Loki’s brow furrowed and questions flicked through his mind. _What’s wrong with her? Why are human healers so useless? Why are you telling me this?_ Finally, he said, “I see. And?”

“And nothing.” Strange made a symbol in the air and a vase knit itself back together, then resettled itself on a spindly table that had been broken a second ago, as well. “Unless you want to go see her.”

Narrowing his eyes, Loki said, “Why would I want to go see her? I barely know the woman. My brother was the one who couldn’t stop mooning over her.” He paused, then added, “He dumped her, by the way.” Why in the world it should be important to perpetuate this fiction of Thor’s to Stephen Strange, a man Loki hated, was baffling. Proof that he was losing it.

Strange paused in his cleanup and looked at Loki. “I was under the impression you wanted to do something nice for your brother.”

At that, Loki spluttered, finally getting out, “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“You don’t say,” Strange deadpanned. Loki glared. “Why don’t you think about it?”

“Why don’t you let me go tell my brother that I’m not dead?” Loki countered.

With a long-suffering sigh, Strange said, “Do you really want to do this again today? I _just_ got done cleaning up.” When Loki snorted, Strange added, “By the way, Thor isn’t even on Earth right now.”

Loki picked at the leather of one of the demi-gaunts on his hand. They were both looking worn. “I know,” he admitted.

There was a startled expression on Strange’s face, maybe the first Loki had ever seen. From this version, at least. “You do?”

“I heard you and Wong talking about it,” Loki said. Why did it make him feel like he was a child, eavesdropping on his parents to try to divine what he was in trouble for this time? Sometimes he knew—well, often he knew, and it was normally because of mischief he’d gotten into, but sometimes it seemed his father was upset with him for no discernible reason. His chest tightened with regrets. Clearing his throat, he added, “Something about some people calling themselves the Guardians.”

Strange was silent. Then, he said, “You have good hearing.”

Loki smiled faintly. “I’m very good at overhearing things that people don’t want me to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Strange said. Holding out a shaking hand, he said, “Think about visiting Jane Foster.” When Loki didn’t answer, instead staring at Strange’s outstretched hand, Strange added, “Oh, sorry. The cup you vanished. I’ll take that back. They’re antique. I’m trying to keep the set together.”

With a smirk, Loki made a small motion with his fingers. The cup dropped out of the air, straight into Strange’s palm. Then, he turned to leave the room, though there were few places in the Sanctum he felt welcome in. As he reached the door, though, he stopped, then spun on his heel to face Strange again. “How do I get to this hospital?” he asked. “In case I _do_ decide to go see Miss Foster.”

Strange smiled a little. “We’ll get you a Metro Card. And Loki?” He hesitated. “I think you’ll find that the library has a number of books that might interest you.”

Loki stood there staring at him, recognizing this gesture as a peace overture—or if not outright peace, at least a truce. It would be easy to fling it back in Strange’s face. Had this occurred fifteen minutes ago, he may have. But instead, he inclined his head and said, “Thank you.” That was sufficient. They were never going to be friends, but coexistence wasn’t a terrible thing to strive for.

When Strange nodded to him, Loki turned and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a comment if you're enjoying this! I love to know what people think!
> 
> You should also come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/)! I like to talk about Loki.


	4. Chapter 4

_It’s a different story, but Loki can’t stop thinking about it._

_Strange is holding a bottle of something in his hand, giving Loki a frustrated look. Loki would say he can’t blame him, except he’s never had any problem blaming people for reactions that an unbiased party would find reasonable. “You just got stabbed,” Strange repeats for at least the third time. “It needs to be disinfected.”_

_Loki is holding his hand to his side. It’s sticky with his blood, but he’s not letting the wizard get any closer, especially not with some unidentified liquid in a bottle. And he’s certainly not going to strip his clothes off, or even lift his tunic._

_He feels woozy. It’s probably partly the blood loss. But it feels more like something else, like the world isn’t quite there, or like he isn’t quite here. Like he’s looking at everything through a pane of glass. Like he’s out of phase with everything around him._

_This is another universe._

_“Loki,” Strange says. “I’m not your enemy.”_

_Everything in him bristles at Strange’s tone. So familiar. So undeservedly familiar. The last time he saw this man—the only time he’s seen this man—he humiliated him. Trapped him in a pocket dimension, falling for thirty minutes. It had been frightening at first, until he figured out what was happening. Then it had just been infuriating._

_Except this Strange isn’t that Strange. Right?_

_His head hurts. It would be easier to attribute it to blood loss._

_“Don’t speak to me as though you know me,” Loki snarls. He doesn’t know what’s happening and he hates it. “And I don’t need your primitive Earth medicine.”_

_Strange glances at the bottle. “It’s rubbing alcohol,” he says._

_“Then pour me a shot,” Loki snaps back._

_“Yeah, and bring you straight to the ER for alcohol poisoning? That’s okay.” Strange looks thoughtful. “Though I don’t know, maybe Frost Giant physiology can handle it.”_

_Clenching his fists and baring his teeth, Loki growls, “I just told you not to speak to me as though you know me. You don’t.”_

_Strange stares at him. His hands are shaking. Why are his hands shaking? Loki thinks again of the grief on the sorcerer’s face when he came tumbling through the portal, Tesseract in hand. He glances at it now, sitting next to him on the dining room table in this place, this Sanctum, and he doesn’t know if he finds its presence comforting or detestable._

_Finally, Strange puts the bottle down on the table. “You’re right,” he says. “I don’t.”_

_Loki stills and bites back the retort he already has lined up. When has anyone ever told him that they don’t know him? When has anyone ever stopped and taken a step back and said, maybe the stories aren’t true?_

_He narrows his eyes. “I want to know what’s going on,” he says. “I want to know how I…or…that other me, came to be in the possession of the Tesseract. And I want to know what he did on_ The Statesman _.”_

_“He died,” Strange says shortly. His tone is clipped. It doesn’t stop Loki from detecting a deep, yawning pain beneath it. This is madness. “He had the Tesseract because in 2012, after the Avengers captured him at Stark Tower, he managed to get ahold of it and escape. He created a timeline that diverged from yours. He lived a different life than you for the past six years. You’re in the universe he created.”_

_This explains nothing. It only makes everything more confusing. Strange sighs heavily and drops into a chair, motioning to Loki. “If you won’t let me look at that knife wound, would you at least sit down? I don’t want to have to get out the smelling salts if you pass out.” There’s a gleam in his eyes, simultaneously amused and devastated._

_Loki ignores the joke. He’s in no danger of passing out. “What do you mean,” he says in the most even tone he can muster, “‘he died?’”_

_Strange lays his hands flat on his thighs, but before he does it, Loki sees that they’re shaking much more badly than they were before. “Do you know much about time travel?” he asks._

_“No.” He knows that time can be odd. His time in the Void comes to mind, after his Fall. The fact that he arrived on Sakaar three weeks before Thor did even though they were both knocked from the Bifrost at nearly the same time. Being on Sakaar and thinking Thor was dead for three weeks that felt like an eternity, thoughts creeping through his head no matter how hard he pushed them away that_ this is life now Thor is gone and how long do I have to do this now? _Ten weeks on_ The Statesman _that might as well have been ten days for how quickly they flew by._

_He doesn’t know much about time travel. But he knows he was ready to die for his brother. “Send me back,” he says._

_Strange meets his eyes. “No.”_

Loki clenched his fingers around the subway stanchion. He had always hated remembering things. Easier to push them down and forget than suffer the pain they brought.

Sending him off on the subway had probably given Strange great joy. It was filthy, jammed with humans, and such close contact meant he was also in close contact with all their varied smells. And it was _hot_. He didn’t tend to feel that his Jotun birth made it difficult for him to tolerate heat, but he was rethinking that stance as he tried to maneuver his shoulder out of the armpit of a man who was tall enough to actually _be_ a full-blooded Frost Giant. The last thing he needed, after the indignity of this journey, was to get sweat stains on this suit.

One thing he _did_ appreciate was the fact that no one looked at him. No one looked at anyone else, actually. They stared at the ground, at their phones, their tablets, blankly into space—anywhere but at the mass of humanity around them. It was an amazing display of self-imposed isolation. There was always the worry that someone would actually recognize him on Earth, particularly in New York, but if they wouldn’t even _look_ at him, that issue was somewhat neutralized. He supposed if he pulled out the horns and started commanding them to kneel, someone might catch on. But as it was, he was just a man in a nice suit. Maybe an exceptionally good looking man, in an exceptionally nice suit, but, nevertheless.

Anyway, the lack of desire to rule Midgard aside, he would never in a million years tell anyone to kneel on the floor of this train. It was absolutely disgusting.

Metro-General wasn’t that far. When Loki pulled out the phone that Strange had given him—“Don’t try to get around the child locks, please,” he’d said as he’d handed it over—to look at the map, he scowled as he saw that he probably could have walked and saved himself the indignity of the train. Another point to Strange. Maybe Loki would turn him into a frog.

There was a shop when he walked in the doors, selling cards, plush toys, and flowers, all of which, he supposed, were meant to cheer up the patients here. And placing it directly inside the doors made it impossible to not feel a stab of guilt if you hadn’t brought something. And as Loki hadn’t brought anything, he immediately was hit with guilt, though it also immediately irritated him. Humans. So transparent. He liked to think he wasn’t as susceptible to them as his brother, but the more time he spent on Earth, regardless of what timeline he was in, the more that was proving to not be the case. Thor would laugh at him if he could see him now. The thought made him roll his eyes, but for once he had enough self-awareness to know that far from being annoyed by the thought, it just made him miss his big, dumb, human-loving brother.

That was why he was here, wasn’t it? He missed Thor. Strange may have been insufferable, but he’d been right. In the absence of anything else, Loki would do something nice for his brother. If that meant providing some sort of succor to the woman who he’d loved, well, so be it.

The shop had a stand holding buckets of bouquets. The roses were the nicest, but they also were all arranged together in one color, which was awfully uninspired, so he just took one of each color and dumped them in one of the cellophane wrappers that was hanging next to the flowers. He picked out a card from the wall as well and went to pay, which was a much more satisfying illusion to cast now that he actually had a phone.

On previous visits to Earth, he’d simply conjured an illusory phone to do this trick. An illusion for each screen as he held his phone to the payment machine, and when the clerk’s money drawer didn’t open, they would invariably assume something was malfunctioning. Loki enjoyed apologizing profusely for the fact that it was probably something on his end, holding up the phone helplessly to show that his payment was showing as completed. People queued behind him would get increasingly annoyed, and the minor chaos delighted him.

Today, the cashier simply shrugged and let him go. Loki stuck the card in his inside jacket pocket and headed up to the floor where Jane was being treated, according to Strange. He bypassed signing in entirely, casting a quick spell on the receptionist so that she would falsely remember that he already had.

The hallway smelled like antiseptic and death. The antiseptic smell bothered him more. It burned his throat. The smell of death, well, _that_ he was used to, though he was more used to the violent kind. This put him on edge, this slow descent into bodily failure.

And then, before he was ready, he was standing in front of the right door. It was ajar, so he pushed it open slowly, poking his head inside. The stench of death was paradoxically less in the room than in the hallway, but Loki still had to try not to stop in his tracks at what he saw. His fingers tightened around the crinkly plastic of the bouquet, and he stepped inside, closing the door gently behind himself.

Jane Foster was asleep. Presumably asleep, rather than dead. She looked less like a person and more like a ghoulish science experiment—the sort of thing Loki and Thor had made up as children to scare each other. Machines hummed around her, some beeping quietly, others clicking once in a while. Tubes were running into her body, with bags hanging on poles all around her, dripping fluid. She was skeletal. Purple-black circles ringed her eyes and she was bald. Her breathing was thin and wheezy. This didn’t look like medicine. It looked like torture.

His gut twisted and he was angry, suddenly, that _his_ planet, _his_ home, had been destroyed, and it was barbaric Midgard that had survived. On Asgard, they could have cured Jane Foster of whatever ailed her instantly. They wouldn’t have had to cut her open and pump her full of chemicals. And what was the point of this? Strange had said she was dying, and Loki believed it. She looked like she should already be dead.

Then again, Loki knew that from experience that torture didn’t kill you if the point was to keep you alive.

A glass vase caught a shaft of sunlight and reflected it to the wall over her head. The flowers in it were long dead, dry and dusty, crumbling onto the table, and there was a white crust from the minerals left behind from the drying water. He dumped the dead flowers in the garbage and filled the vase with water.

As he positioned the fresh bouquet in the vase, a voice said from behind him, “You’re sending kind of mixed messages with those.”

Loki turned to face her. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

She raised one hand a few inches off the mattress to gesture. “The roses. Every color means something different.” She paused and swallowed. It seemed to be difficult. “I don’t remember which one is supposed to mean ‘get better.’”

“I see.” That seemed ridiculous and also exactly right for this planet. Taking several steps towards the bed, he said, “Hello, Jane Foster.”

“Hello, Loki,” she replied, seeming to take this completely in stride. There was no surprise on her face, no fear, not even any trepidation. Considering this woman’s experiences of him, he’d have expected a _little_ nervousness. But she kept watching him as she said calmly, “You’ve never visited before.”

This took him off guard. Of course he hadn’t visited before. Why would he have visited? For all she’d known, he was dead. For all _everyone_ knew, except Strange and Wong, he was dead. Obviously, dating his brother would have necessitated a certain amount of patience and calm, but she was so unruffled that he felt almost unnerved.

Maybe there was something wrong with her mind. Strange hadn’t said what disease was killing her. “No, I haven’t,” he said, at a loss for words. That didn’t happen often.

Serenely, she nodded. “Thor’s been by a few times.”

What?

“Malekith, too. He’s not my favorite.” Jane’s gaze darkened. Oh. He thought he saw what was happening here. “Your mother came, once.” Loki’s heart screwed tighter in his chest. “But this is the first time you’ve come. I mean, I know it’s just the painkillers, but at least my hallucinations don’t lie to me about how I’m going to ‘beat’ this. I was supposed to get a lower dose today, too…”

Loki took several steps closer to the bed until he was standing at the foot of it. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not an hallucination.”

She laughed. “Sure. Loki, the god-slash-alien who tried to rule Earth, is visiting me in the hospital.” He tilted his head at her, holding her gaze, and her serene smile dropped away. “Oh my god,” she said. “No. There’s no…you’re dead.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Not today, at least.”

Shaking her head, Jane said, “You can’t…why would…I don’t understand.”

To her credit, she showed no fear of him, not that she ever had. “I heard you were ill,” he said. This wasn’t exactly a clarifying statement. Reaching into his jacket, he said, “Here. I got you a card.”

He dropped it in her lap and she gingerly picked it up. He was glad he hadn’t sealed it. The effort of lifting her hands to hold the card seemed almost too much for her. For a moment, all he could do was stare at her left hand, which was wadded with cotton, gauze, and tape to hold a tube in place. Pulling the card out of the envelope, she looked up at him, an unimpressed expression on her face. “‘Get Well Soon?’” she said. “I hate to break it to you, but I’m not going to get well at all.”

“Yes,” he said. “I heard that too. But I thought you might like the bear.” She flipped the card around and pointed to the teddy bear on the front, raising her eyebrows. Or at least, where her eyebrows would be, if she had any.

There was a chair near the bed, and he grabbed it by its front and dragged it forward, sitting down in the same motion, so that he was within arm’s reach of her. “I had a toy when I was a child, an Asgardian wolf. It was similarly infantilized to appear cute instead of vicious.”

Jane reached out and closed her fingers around his hand. Her grip was stronger than he’d expected. “You’re real,” she said, her tone shocked.

“I’m aware,” he replied, smiling slightly.

“But you’re dead,” she said. “It was all over the news. I watched it after I got brought back, someone said New Asgard to me and I said what are you talking about, and they said oh, I must have been Snapped…” She stopped and took a fortifying breath. “Thanos attacked your ship. There was a woman—a Valkyrie?—she said Thor, Heimdall, and you stayed to fight.” Here, she paused, then added, “I didn’t get it at first, I thought she must have been talking about someone else, because I saw you die on Svartalfheim, but it was pretty obvious she was talking about you. The press asked questions about you, because of the whole New York thing, but she just said it had been an honor to fight with you.”

Well. _That_ was a surprise.

“But Thor was the only other survivor,” Jane went on. “There was a follow-up special a year later, and no one else had made it after the initial refugees except him.”

He sighed. What, had he been hoping that she somehow wouldn’t know this? Strange had caught Loki up, after all. There was no reason Jane wouldn’t have learned all of this, too. New Asgard _was_ on Earth now, and he was pretty sure this realm had invented the 24 hour news cycle, much to its detriment. Alien refugees landing on your planet was pretty big news. “I’m not dead,” he said, hoping this would suffice. The expression on her face suggested that it really didn’t, but she didn’t press the issue. “So,” he said, “what’s wrong with you?”

“You know, that’s considered a pretty rude question here.”

“Miss Foster,” Loki said, “I’m not my brother. I’m not here to learn your strange Earth customs.” For effect, he put his hands up and waggled his fingers. “I ask because I want to know. And by the way—” He arched an eyebrow. “It’s rude on Asgard as well.”

She opened the card and stared at the trite message on the inside. “Cancer,” she said without looking at him. “I guess you don’t have that on Asgard.”

“No.” Tilting his head, he said, “Though, who knows, now that what’s left of my people are here. Maybe it was just something in the air.”

A smile flickered across her face, sad and angry, and then she looked up at him, a bitter hardness in her eyes. “I hope not, for their sake.” If he’d known this woman better, he would have questioned her about the fury in her voice, which reminded him so much of himself in its suddenness. A spark on kindling, fire just waiting to consume her. But it faded, and she just looked tired. “I’m so sorry, by the way. About whatever happened to Asgard. It must have been terrible.”

He let his gaze drift, finding that he couldn’t maintain eye contact while he talked about Asgard. “It was the end of everything,” he said.

“The death of the gods,” Jane said. “Except you and Thor made it.” She shrugged at his look. “Erik talked a lot about this stuff back when I first met Thor. I guess it stuck.”

There was no point in explaining to her that he both had and hadn’t made it. Not when he was going to spend, at most, twenty minutes sitting here. Then he’d never see her again. “How _is_ Selvig?” Loki asked instead.

Jane’s eyes flashed. Ah yes, _there_ was the woman who’d slapped him. “Not looking to catch up with you, I don’t think.” Then, she sobered and looked at her lap. “I don’t know, actually. I haven’t seen him.” Loki’s brow furrowed. He’d been under the impression that Selvig and Jane were close. “Not since we were all Snapped back.”

“Why?” he asked curiously. His mother would be horrified by his manners.

She met his eyes, her gaze steady. Steadier than it seemed like it should be. “I already told you. I prefer my hallucinatory visitors. They don’t lie to me. Before the Snap, it was like having a cheerleading squad on endless rotation. ‘You can beat this Jane! You just have to fight it! Keep up the positive attitude!’ So what does it mean that this stupid disease is going to kill me? Did I not fight hard enough? Maybe I’m not a fighter at all?”

He held her gaze. It had never been in his nature to coddle people or reassure them, because he’d never felt like anyone had afforded him the same treatment. He’d always been expected to fight his own battles, to buck up, to not whine about how life wasn’t fair—culminating in his father’s claim that he’d been ready to execute Loki, and that only Frigga had been able to stay his hand. _If I hadn’t taken you in, you would not be here now to hate me._ Translation: shut up and sit down, you don’t have it that bad.

The memory still made him burn with pain and rage and shame. His father had been willing to kill him. Loki had always been torn between hating him for his heartlessness, his hypocrisy, and the knowledge, deep down, that he deserved death. Death kept coming for him, didn’t it? And no one had ever come to save him. He’d received no comfort. He was _lucky_ to be alive and that should be enough.

But the urge to comfort Jane needled him. She was a tangible link to Thor, one of the few people left alive who had shared any kind of emotional intimacy with him. And, it bore acknowledging, the only one he’d been given permission to speak with. He supposed he could go visit Banner, but Strange would probably throw a fit and tell him he’d just reversed the rotation of the galaxy and that they had a week before everything was sucked into the supermassive black hole at the galactic center.

Carefully, he said, “Speaking as a warrior—not necessarily the epithet I apply most often to myself, but it’s inarguably true—I can tell you that your problem is definitely _not_ that you aren’t a fighter.” _She’s strong in ways you’d never understand_ , Thor had once said to him about Jane Foster. Loki wasn’t sure if he’d ever understand, but he was willing to believe in her strength, and that he’d probably underestimated it due to her overwhelming humanness. 

“Then what is it?” she asked.

One of his eyebrows quirked up and he smiled in dark amusement. “You got sick. Not everyone gets better.” Shrugging, he added, “That’s all there is to it. The universe doesn’t have some kind of grand plan. It’s just chance. A trillion trillion trillion decisions being made every day that cause events to play out the way they do. Change one, and maybe you get a different outcome. Or maybe you don’t. Perhaps you got ill because the Aether was too much for you. Or perhaps it was because some Ravager passed wind on the bridge of his ship, caused his pilot to swerve into a passing warship’s lane, causing the warship to open fire and kill everyone on board, leaving the ship to drift until being pulled into the orbit of an unstable neutron star until it crashed into the surface, causing the ship’s jump drive to go critical and the star to send out a gamma burst, which hit you because you decided to get lunch at McDonald’s instead of eating in your office.” He paused to take a breath.“The point is, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It is what it is.”

She smiled a little. “Thor never mentioned you had such a way with words.”

“Hm.” He returned the smile joylessly. “I don’t imagine Thor mentioned much about me at all. We weren’t on the best of terms while the two of you were…together. Anyway, it was never a quality he particularly appreciated about me.”

No argument from her. He’d congratulate himself on a good guess, except it wasn’t much of a guess, considering his brother hadn’t come to visit him while he’d been locked in Asgard’s dungeons.

She leaned back into the pillows propped behind her. “So, not to ask a personal question, but how exactly are you not dead? I was there when you…on Svartalfheim, I mean.”

He weighed what to tell her. The whole story? Obviously not. So which part of it? The part that people found easy to believe. The Trickster being the only thing he could be, even if he’d been screaming his whole life for everyone to stop forcing him into a box. “I faked my death,” he said. “And then I pretended to be my father for four years.”

This didn’t seem to surprise her. Of course it didn’t. Loki had never even bothered to tell Thor that he hadn’t intended to fake his death—that what had happened was that he’d _survived_ on Svartalfheim, and then he’d taken advantage of the situation. Perhaps, as those weeks on board _The Statesman_ had spooled out, Thor would have believed him. But he might not have. “Did you kill him?” Jane asked.

“My father?” Loki sniffed. He’d thought about it, when he’d cast his spell and Odin had been frozen, helpless, in front of him. He’d trapped Odin first, then dropped his glamor, so his father would know exactly what had happened in those final moments, and who had done it.

No, that was a lie. He’d never entertained the idea of killing his father. He’d put on a great show of considering it, so that Odin would know what it felt like to have someone you loved, someone you trusted, look you in the eye and tell you they wanted you dead.

“No,” he said, and left it at that.

Jane nodded. He wondered if she was tired of this conversation yet. He wondered if he could leave.

He found, actually, that he didn’t mind staying. For a little longer, at least.

“It must have been nice to have a life to come back to,” she said.

With a chuckle, he said, “Don’t be so sure.”

She laughed too, but it was bitter and scathing, far more than his own had been. “Whatever you came back to had to have been better than this.” Her face darkening, she gestured at the room, moving her hand too far and causing the tube taped to it to catch and yank. She didn’t flinch. “You know, it was supposed to be treatable. When I was first diagnosed. They said my prognosis was really positive. But the cancer didn’t respond to anything. It just kept spreading and spreading. It’s funny you mention the Aether, actually, because that’s what it started reminding me of—like every time someone tried to make it better, it would defend itself, and get bigger, and take over more and more of me.”

Her eyes were burning in her face, two points of fire amidst the hard angles of her cheekbones and eye sockets. Loki couldn’t look away. Her lips thinned and she went on, “When the Snap came, and I felt myself going…I didn’t know what was happening, or why, but you know what I thought? I thought, _thank god._ Because it didn’t hurt. I was just _going_ and I didn’t have to be in pain anymore. I didn’t have to die piece by piece and feel every horrible moment of it.”

Loki opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Closing his mouth again, he furrowed his brow and leaned back in the chair, fidgeting with his fingers. If he was Thor, if he was one of the Avengers, one of the good guys—heaven forbid, that ridiculous Captain America—he would have reassured her that it was better to live, to fight on.

Good thing he wasn’t one of the good guys.

“You didn’t want to come back,” he said.

In a measured tone, full of quiet fury, she said, “I’ll never forgive the Avengers for _bringing_ me back. I couldn’t be in pain if I was dead. And now I’m back, for what? So I can die again, but more slowly?”

The thing was, there was no point in blaming the Avengers for what they couldn’t help but do. They saved people, because that’s what people with massive hero complexes did. Thor had been trying his whole life to save Loki, and when that had failed, he’d turned his attention to saving his precious Earth.

But then, she sighed, sagging further down into the pillows. “But I guess it makes me kind of a hypocrite to be mad at them for bringing me back, when I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to stay alive.”

Tilting his head, he gestured to the machinery surrounding her and asked, “Is that what all this is for?” When she nodded, he asked, “Why? Forgive me for being blunt—” This made her snort, which was fair, as he’d done nothing but be blunt since he’d arrived. “—but you’ve made the situation sound rather terminal.”

A look of determination flickered across her face. “I have research to finish. I obviously _won’t_ finish, but I have to try. Someone else will have to do it after I’m gone. But I want to do as much as possible.” She smiled joylessly. “It sucks when you want to know everything, but you know exactly how little time you have to even scratch the surface.”

“I understand,” he said. “That is, I know what it’s like to know you’ll never have enough time to know everything. Right now I suppose my outlook is considerably better than yours, but it’s also been considerably worse.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t ask him to explain. “I wanted to understand the Convergence. How the Bifrost works.” She smirked. “What kept everything on the ground on Asgard.”

“We had gravity, Miss Foster,” he said, a smile twitching at his face. “As for the rest—why not just call it magic and leave it at that?”.

She made a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Because I don’t believe in magic.”

Loki just shrugged. No point in taking up what little time remained to her trying to convince her she was wrong. There was also no point in telling her that magic could have saved her. Surely she knew. She’d been to Asgard, she’d seen what they were capable of. People made their choices, and just because he didn’t understand them didn’t mean they didn’t have reasons that seemed ironclad to them. Didn’t he know that from experience?

Her eyelids were beginning to droop, so he stood up and said, “I’ve taken up enough of your time, Miss Foster.” He’d been endeavoring to do more good than harm. Overstaying his welcome at a terminally ill person’s bedside seemed to fit more into the latter.

She smiled faintly up at him and he half-expected her to ask him if he planned on coming back. For the record, he wasn’t. But she just said, “Thanks for visiting.”

He inclined his head. Her eyes were closed before he reached the door, and he didn’t linger before he closed it with a click.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a comment if you're enjoying this! I love to know what people think!
> 
> You should also come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/)! I like to talk about Loki.


	5. Chapter 5

_Strange won’t send him back to_ The Statesman _because he wants him to go somewhere else. 2012, to be precise. Six years into the past, to Stark Tower after the Battle of New York. Loki is supposed to put the Tesseract back so that this universe will never exist. Strange explains it several times and Loki isn’t stupid but it makes his brain feel like it’s wrapping itself into knots and consuming itself._

_“You’re willing to die?” Loki asks._

_“It’s not really dying,” Strange says. “It’s more like…ceasing to exist. Never having existed in the first place. Painless, I assume. Without Loki—you—taking the Tesseract, this divergent timeline just—” He motions. “Poof.”_

_Loki gives him an incredulous look. “For what? Why would you be willing to simply stop existing?”_

_Timing is everything, they say. There’s an explosion outside the Sanctum at that moment. “Hold that thought,” Strange says to him, then opens one of his damned portals and walks through it._

_Loki holds the thought but he doesn’t stay where he is. He flits from room to room in the house, which seems to grow rooms and hallways that weren’t there a minute ago, as if it’s trying to confuse him. Which is stupid, because it’s a house. But Loki can also feel the power oozing from every piece of stone, every brick, every piece of wood and plaster in this place. So it’s really not stupid at all._

_But he finally finds a window that overlooks the street, and there he sees Strange fighting—something._

_A horde of somethings, actually. There’s some sort of…portal in the street disgorging disfigured creatures with black eyes and black, veiny, tendrils running up their necks and over their faces. They’re horrible, and Loki has seen a lot of horrible things in his life._

_It’s Strange, though, whom he can’t look away from. Loki’s magic is illusions and knives in the dark, shapeshifting and mind games. It’s quiet and effective and powerful and he’s certainly used it in battle before. But what he’s watching Strange do is something else. The creatures are trying to kill Strange. They don’t stand a chance._

_Loki has never seen anyone fight with magic like this. There’s what he can see—ropes of orange, light flaring and exploding, the surrounding buildings and street transforming into shapes, folding in ways he didn’t know were possible, and then there’s what he_ can’t _see, a blister of power that’s about to explode, fueled by…fueled by whatever he can see in Strange’s eyes._

_The things still look like they’re going to overwhelm him. But then something…happens. An explosion of white that sears Loki’s eyes and forces him to close them. When he opens them, the creatures are gone, and so is the portal they were coming through. Strange is sprawled on the asphalt, face down and unmoving._

_Loki stares, then holds up the Tesseract, which he was barely aware he was holding until now. The only time he ever used it to travel through space was when SHIELD had the door propped open, but it can’t be so hard. The other version of him did it. So Loki grips it tightly and pushes his magic towards it, imagining_ The Statesman _and his brother. It’s his life and his death. He made his choice._

_The Tesseract sits in his hands, pulsing softly with blue light, and does nothing._

_Loki shoves more magic at it and this time it does something, something that feels like an electric shock to his brain. It’s a warning. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does._

_This isn’t his Tesseract. Just like this isn’t his New York, his Midgard, his universe._

_Loki closes his eyes. Does he want to die? Does he wish he was dead? All he knows is he wanted to be the brother he’d never done a good job of being. And now he doesn’t know what happened, doesn’t know if Thor’s alright or what happened to the Valkyrie, Heimdall, Korg, his people. He wanted to do the right thing for them. He wanted Thor to survive._

_With a sigh, he vanishes the Tesseract back into his pocket dimension. Then he goes outside to see if Strange is dead._

_He’s not. When Loki turns him onto his back and checks his pulse, there’s still one there, though it looks like there shouldn’t be. He’s bleeding from his nose, his mouth, his ears, his eyes. Perhaps he’s dying, but isn’t dead_ yet _._

_But then he groans and opens his eyes, blood gluing his eyelashes shut until he can force them apart. He looks up, squints at Loki’s face, and says hoarsely, “_ That _is the reason I’m willing to cease existing.”_

* * *

“How did it go with Jane?” Strange asked from a chair in the study as Loki walked by, having returned to the Sanctum from the hospital.

Loki glanced at him, considering several responses along the lines of _shut up_ or _I hate you_ or _I very nearly didn’t come back here._ All were true, to some extent, some more than others. Instead, he finally said, “I can’t imagine why my brother dumped her,” and continued up the stairs to go to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I know this is a short chapter!
> 
> Drop me a comment if you're enjoying this! I love to know what people think! Kudos are also greatly appreciated 😊 
> 
> You should also come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/)! I like to talk about Loki.


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn’t freedom. It certainly wasn’t what he wanted, which was, to be perfectly maudlin about it, a family reunion. But he seemed to have passed a test, because Strange remarked the following morning, “Nice day for a walk.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Loki said without looking up.

He was curled on a bench in the library, a book in his lap. Last night, he’d heard Strange and Wong having a discussion about his access to it. The library, not the book, though he supposed the book could have been part of the dispute. The battle lines were either surprising or completely predictable, Loki couldn’t decide. It was Wong’s voice that had made him crack his door open and creep down the stairs, not without first neutralizing the squealing hinges that usually gave him away.

“We can’t give him access. Even if we ignore the fact that he isn’t one of us, he’s dangerous.”

“I know,” Strange replied.

“But you’re still fine with letting him read these books? We don’t know what he could do with this knowledge. I was _here_ in 2012, Stephen. I don’t trust him.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then why are we letting him in?”

There was a silence and Loki found himself leaning forward.

Finally, Strange said, “Because I trust myself. If some version of me sent him here, that’s worth something.”

The obvious rejoinder to this was that Loki might be lying—he certainly _was_ a liar, even though—

Loki had looped an arm around the railing, leaning against it, and thought about that. When was the last time he actually _had_ lied? Not the normal kind that everyone told themselves, and which he told himself more than perhaps other people did, but the other kind, the kind that had earned him his less kind moniker, God of Lies.

It had been swearing fealty to Thanos. And in reverse order, “I’m not Asgardian,” then, the biggest lie of all, his preference between giving up the Tesseract and his brother’s life. “Kill away,” he’d said, with such bravado that it had sounded false even to his ears. He’d known Thanos would call his bluff. Thanos, after all, had broken him. Thanos knew that Thor meant everything to Loki and he would have remembered that, even as Loki was busy telling himself that Thor meant nothing.

Thanos had been arrogant enough to think he’d successfully twisted that love for Thor into a hate that would give him a foothold on Earth. To this day, Loki didn’t know if he’d sabotaged himself during the Battle of New York or if he’d simply been beaten by a more powerful foe. Thanos’s control had run deep, after all. Maybe he’d dropped the scepter and simply forgotten it in his haste to escape Stark Tower. Maybe it was simple carelessness that had allowed the Avengers to beat him.

Then again, Loki wasn’t careless. Perhaps something deep inside him had said, _You know, maybe_ don’t _reach for that scepter._

In any case, the Mad Titan hadn’t made the same mistake twice. Loki’s lies on _The Statesman_ had been for nothing.

No, not for nothing. They’d been to try to save something. The universe, he supposed. But it turned out that with the universe hanging in the balance, he’d still choose to save the life of one man.

Perhaps on some astral plane Loki was projecting onto, Stephen Strange could see all that. Who knew? Loki was a better sorcerer, but he had to admit Strange had some good tricks. Whatever the reason, no one—and nothing—had stopped him from entering the library, from pulling out a book (or ten, which he’d done just to see if he could get away with it), and settling himself on the bench, a pillow behind the small of his back.

Hours had passed that way before Strange had come in with his inane comment on the weather. And how _would_ Loki know? He wasn’t allowed to take walks, except to see Jane, apparently. Still staring down at the page he’d been trying to translate, he added, “I’m sure it’s _lovely_ out.”

Strange leaned against the wall and stared at him, until finally Loki relented and looked up. It was an odd, disorienting sensation to be able to read the facial expression of a man whom he didn’t technically know and definitely didn’t like, simply because he’d known a version of Strange from an alternate timeline.

_Simply._ Right. Possibly not the right word to apply to any of this.

“Do you still have that phone I gave you?” Strange asked.

Loki held out a hand, palm flat, and the phone materialized there. The other man took a step forward and picked it up, and Loki had to try not to jerk away from the brush of Strange’s fingers on his palm. After a few taps on the screen, Strange held the phone out again so Loki could see what he’d pulled up. Running a finger along an east-west street towards the southern end of Manhattan, he said, “This is 23 rd . Stay south of it. Stark Industries sold off Stark Tower years ago, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still got feeds to the Avengers facility upstate.”

At this, Loki finally raised his eyes. No doubt Strange wanted him to effuse about the fact that he was apparently going to be allowed out, even if it was still on a leash. Instead, he said, “I thought the Black Order destroyed the New Avengers Facility.”

Giving Loki a flat look, Strange said, “I’m telling you that you don’t have to stay inside the Sanctum.”

Loki stared at him, then unfolded his legs and planted his feet on the floor, closing the book with a thump. A cloud of dust mushroomed up from the pages and he had to try not to sneeze. That would have rather ruined his image.

“I understand what you’re telling me.” Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “Why the sudden change of heart? For weeks, no matter how many times I’ve complained, you wouldn’t let me set foot outside this building. Now, suddenly, you’re setting me loose on Manhattan.”

“Just downtown Manhattan, technically.” Strange proffered the phone. “Nothing north of 23 rd , remember? Oh, and no swimming across the Hudson or the East River, either. It’s a lot cleaner than it used to be but I still don’t think you want to submerge yourself in it.”

Loki rested his hands in his lap and linked his fingers, snorting delicately with laughter. Then, he tilted his head and said, “Why, Strange?”

Strange crossed his arms over his chest, still leaning against the wall. “What, you don’t think I’m doing this just to be nice?”

Raising an eyebrow, Loki said, “I think you’re too self-important to be nice. You take your role protecting this Realm entirely too seriously.”

With a chuckle, Strange said, “That’s something _you_ have personal experience with, though. Didn’t you die to protect what was left of your people?”

Loki stared up at him. Depending on which version of the timeline one was talking about, yes. He narrowed his eyes and said, “I would never sum up my actions in so few words.”

“Right. You’re a complicated guy.”

Loki smirked.

Taking in what sounded like a fortifying breath, Strange went on, “Let’s just say you’ve proven yourself worthy of a certain amount of trust. You didn’t try to run off the other day, mainly.”

As though he’d have gotten anywhere. He knew Strange would have just opened up a portal underneath him and dropped him right back into the Sanctum, probably from a height of at least ten feet to make sure it really smarted when he hit the floor face first. Anyway, there would be spells keeping him bound to the area Strange wanted him confined in. Maybe he could cross 23 rd , but the Hudson? Doubtful.

He twisted his fingers together and said, “You keep telling me the best thing for everyone is that I remain here. I know what you can do with time. _Could_ do with time. I don’t think you’re making it up. You have nothing to gain by keeping me here. So.” He hesitated. “As you say, I died once for a worthy purpose, even if ultimately I ended up…not dying. I would hate to throw all that character growth away now.”

It felt like a lie to use the word ‘worthy’ in reference to himself, even if Strange himself had just used it too. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself that way. Well, it would probably pass. He’d be back to loathing himself in no time at all.

“So,” Strange said. “Do you want to go for a walk, or not? Like I said, it’s a nice day. Might not be too many of them left, you know. The weather’s supposed to turn at the end of the week.”

With a slight smile, one that went nowhere near his eyes, Loki said, “Only if you’re not coming with.”

Strange didn’t blink. “I had a feeling you might say something like that.” He was still holding out the phone and finally, Loki reached for it. No reason for their fingers to touch. Loki, perversely, found himself disappointed by this. Different Stephen Strange, though. Loki wanted nothing to do with him that way, but it was impossible not to think of it when there were so many similarities.

That was another of the worst parts of this, and it made him hate Strange even more, because he both was and wasn’t the person Loki wanted him to be. _That_ Strange was gone. That Strange never should have existed in the first place. Loki, younger, more selfish, more immature, his losses not piled quite so high, had created the universe that would contain him with one snap decision. Snap decisions really weren’t always his forte. The Norns must have delighted in setting out _those_ threads, if they’d been able to keep them straight, with the lines crisscrossing and tangling until only one Loki remained. And what was one more loss, for him? He understood the cost of things as he hadn’t when he’d been younger. He understood what the Norns demanded.

He got to his feet. It was a nice day. Blah, blah, something-something about thinking such dark thoughts on nice days. All the optimists in his life who would have fed him something like that were gone. At least, if he played his cards right, he could get Thor back.

Though, it had to be said, he wasn’t sure he’d ever played his cards right. To be fair, the hand he’d been dealt hadn’t been very good. He’d worked with what he’d been given and made more out of it than he’d had any right to, but his gifts were routinely his undoing. There was probably another aphorism he could apply here. One step forward, two steps back?

Loki twirled his fingers and his leathers were replaced by his favorite black suit, limned in green as the change took effect. It wasn’t a glamor. More of a magical costume change. He’d bought the suit when he’d stuck Odin in the nursing home, thinking he’d be visiting Earth at least once in awhile.

He hadn’t, but it was still a nice suit.

No comment or change of expression from Strange on the change of clothes. Slipping the phone into a pocket, Loki said with a sarcastic half-smile, “Don’t wait up.”

As he left the library, he thought he might actually get the last word for once. But between one step and another, he was outside on the front stoop. He only stopped himself from tumbling down the stairs by teetering backwards and grabbing the railing. A group of children on scooters went by at that moment and laughed at him, but he just grit his teeth and ignored them. Sometimes he _hated_ Earth.

That was the thing though. He walked down the steps and turned left for no good reason. Where it came to Earth, he’d gone from utter indifference to contempt laced with bitterness—Thor loved it _so_ much and in the past, Loki hadn’t been able to understand why. Now, he found himself with a grudging acceptance that perhaps this Realm wasn’t so bad.

Of course, in theory, he needed to get over that line from grudging acceptance to actual fondness. New Asgard was here now, and one way or another, Loki was going to end up there. Strange couldn’t keep him Sanctum-bound forever. For one thing, Loki would outlive him by multiple millennia. Not that he planned on waiting another forty years to get to Norway.

As he walked, he took in everything. Cars whooshed by on the street, leaving the bite of gasoline in the air. People hurried by on the sidewalk, walking fast, flowing around him as though he was a rock in a stream. The buildings were crammed together with no space between them, apartments stacked on apartments stacked on apartments stacked on stores, restaurants, laundromats, bars, the omnipresent Starbucks. Caught in traffic, the 55 belched diesel, and beneath his feet, Loki could feel the rumble of the subway. The trees planted at regular intervals somehow made it feel more urban and artificial, more of the heaving mass of humanity that this city was.

The chaos appealed to him.

The crassness of it, the very Midgardian sensibilities of the hodgepodge architecture, the primitive transportation, that appealed to him less. The thought that New Asgard might look like this screwed his stomach into a knot. So much had been lost in the Ragnarok. Loki had barely begun to deal with the ramifications—and he wasn’t going to start right now. Much as he hated to think the words, Strange had been right. It _was_ a nice day. The sun was out, the sky was blue, it was cool enough that the city’s more unsavory odors weren’t quite so obtrusive. New Yorkers were in jackets, but of course, Loki didn’t get cold like other people did, and he was comfortable.

He hit Lafayette and stopped, looking up and down the street. People were rushing here too. Everyone on this planet was constantly running from one place to the next, one thing to the next. They never seemed to stop to breathe, let alone to enjoy anything, or learn, or even just to observe. Then again, if his life was as fleeting and ephemeral as a human’s, maybe he wouldn’t either. His own lifetime would be a heartbeat in the slow pulse of the universe. In comparison, a human’s was an electrical pulse in the brain, a flicker of one firing neuron. Bright and brief. Maybe meaningless.

He thought of the people that had saved the universe, those ridiculous Avengers. And he thought of Jane Foster. And he thought, too, of the humans he’d met and come to care for in the other timeline.

Maybe not meaningless.

And maybe some of them did the best they could with the time they had.

He pulled the phone out of his pocket and pulled up the map. Metro-General Hospital wasn’t far. He could walk there. He snorted. Why would he want to do that? There was no reason to see Jane Foster again. His visit had only been to get himself some karmic points from the cosmos, even if his brother would never know he’d done it. If and when— _when_ , it was a definite when, despite how much of an _if_ it currently felt like—he saw Thor again, he certainly didn’t plan on telling his brother about visiting Jane. And Jane, of course, wouldn’t be telling him, as she’d be dead.

For a moment, he stood there in the sun.

_The sun will shine on us again._

Looking at the map again, he slipped the phone back into his pocket and walked. This time, he signed in at the desk, hesitating over his surname for a second too long. It didn’t draw comment, though. Neither did the room number he wrote down, though the receptionist raised her eyebrows.

The roses still looked nice, at least. Someone had refilled the vase with water. Jane was awake and staring at him. She looked more shocked at his presence now than she had when he’d come the first time. Honestly, he was surprised at it too. It was probably showing on his face.

“You came back,” she finally said.

He stood there in the shaft of sunlight coming in through the window, not speaking. Choosing his words, though the truth was that he didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t planned on coming back. He didn’t know why he had.

But he walked around to the side of the bed and pulled the chair up again. Sitting down, he said, “I suppose I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a comment if you're enjoying this! I love to know what people think! Kudos are also greatly appreciated 😊 
> 
> You should also come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/)! I like to talk about Loki.


	7. Chapter 7

_Strange wants him to do it immediately. Once he can stand up and walk back inside, he goes over his plan once more and says, “So you can do it now. Go back to 2012. End all of this. Go back to your own timeline. You should probably find me once you get there. Who else is going to believe all this?” Now that Loki has spent several hours with him, he can see how the wizard doesn’t want to really look at him, how he avoids his eyes, focuses on the empty space over his shoulder._

_“I can’t, actually,” Loki says. He tries not to feel insulted that Strange clearly wants to get rid of him. He doesn’t want to be here, anyway. He doesn’t say that the_ last _person he’ll be seeking help from is his own universe’s Strange.“I tried. The Tesseract won’t work for me.” Obviously Strange will understand the implication here—Loki would have left him bleeding in the street. He doesn’t care about these people or this universe or whatever is wrong here. All he cares about is getting back. His heart is halfway up his throat and his chest is tight but it doesn’t matter, because the cursed Tesseract is useless._

_There’s a twitch at Strange’s jaw. “You’re the one who’s had this thing, haven’t you figured out how to use it yet?”_

_Loki laughs. It’s harsher than he intended. Or perhaps it’s_ exactly _as harsh as he intended. “I’m afraid you’re confusing me with myself. I took the Tesseract from the weapons vault on Asgard just before I fulfilled a fire demon’s prophecy and started Ragnarok. I—” He can’t say the rest. He can’t even think the rest. The screams of his people rattle in his head, Thor’s face as Thanos starts to split his skull with the Power Stone flares across his vision. He can’t. He can’t._

_Somehow, his voice comes out normal as he says, “I’m not the Loki you knew. Clearly he was far nobler than I’ve ever been.”_

_He doesn’t know what he expects in response to this. He’s not surprised when Strange simply walks away. Is Loki supposed to follow? He doesn’t._

_Another one of those orange portals appears in the foyer and a man in a red robe steps out. He looks Loki up and down and says, “So, you’re the other one.” His face is expressionless. When Loki clenches his fists, the man adds, “I’m Wong. Ask me before you read any of the books in the library.”_

_These people act like they know him and it makes him want to scream. He would run, but there’s nowhere to go. He thought he was used to feeling lost, but it turns out there’s farther to fall. Black threatens to swallow him. That’s familiar. Why is it that every time he thinks he’s dead, he can’t quite seem to follow through?_

* * *

“When did you know you were ill?” Loki asked.

They went on walks. Eventually. Not the second time he visited her, or even the third. But on the fourth, they went to lunch in the hospital café. The food was predictably disappointing. Then, on the fifth, she said she wanted to go outside.

A leaf fell from a tree overhead, bright yellow like the autumn sun overhead in the crisp blue sky. Things like this were probably what had made Thor fall in love with this Realm. The leaf landed in Jane’s lap and she picked it up. “I love fall,” she said idly. “Kind of depressing that this is the last time I’ll see it.” Then, she looked at him. “Does it matter when I knew?”

He leaned back, slinging an arm over the back of the bench they were sitting on. Jane had walked farther than he’d thought her capable of. It had been several blocks, instead of several steps, before she’d said she needed to sit down. “I suppose what I’m asking is, why didn’t you ask Thor for help? You know we could have cured this instantly on Asgard.”

Twirling the leaf in her fingers, she said, “Your father compared me to a goat and said doctors on Earth could treat me when Thor brought me to Asgard after the Aether got inside me. I wasn’t in a hurry to ask him to cure my cancer.”

“That sounds like Odin.” Loki raised an eyebrow. “But please. That’s not the real reason.”

She glanced at him. “I guess it would have been _you_ I was asking,” she said. “Would you have said yes?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“So are you.”

With a snort, he waved a hand and said, “Yes. Why not? It would have made Thor happy. And your presence would have distracted him from thinking too much about me. I probably would have had to be cruel to you, though. My father, despite his high-minded speeches and treaties, didn’t think much of the inhabitants of the lesser Realms if they happened to show up on Asgard.”

She kept twirling the leaf, staring at him. “I didn’t know you cared about making Thor happy.”

What to say? _I don’t? That’s not what I meant? It would just have been to keep him distracted from the fact that my Odin impression wouldn’t have fooled him forever?_ Obviously, the truth was unspeakable—the fact that throughout his life, Loki’s desire to make his brother happy had far outweighed his desire to do the opposite. It was just that he seemed to have forgotten how to express that over the past few hundred years, to Thor or anyone else.

Jane took her hat off long enough to run a hand over the bald dome of her head. Her skin looked blueish, almost translucent. Loki’s lack of response didn’t seem to bother or surprise her, and finally she said, “I didn’t want to be cured by Asgardian tech. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

Furrowing his brow, Loki asked, “Fair to who?”

She laughed. “Everyone who _didn’t_ hit an alien prince with their van.”

He blinked. “Why should that matter? You had an advantage. Why didn’t you use it?”

With a shrug, she said, “I just didn’t want to.”

A man walking a dog on the path stopped in front of them, staring at Loki. “Oh my god, you’re…”

“Loki?” he asked, when the man trailed off. The dog cocked its head and stared.

The man laughed and shook himself. “Sorry. That’s crazy. You must get it all the time, though.” He laughed, then his eyes flicked to Jane and his expression froze. “Have a good one, man,” he said, hurrying off in an attempt to pretend he hadn’t noticed the very sick woman sitting on the bench with the God of Mischief dead-ringer.

“I don’t, actually,” Loki remarked to Jane. “Get that all the time.”

Tilting her head back so that the sun hit her face, she closed her eyes and said, “You have to admit, after everything that’s happened on Earth in the last twelve years, one measly alien attack on Midtown Manhattan’s pretty easy to forget.”

“I’m not sure whether I should be insulted or not.” Of course he wasn’t. It was a relief, actually, to know that people could forget, even if they couldn’t forgive. But he had to maintain the image he’d crafted so carefully, because without that, he _really_ didn’t have anything.

Her eyes still closed, she shook her head and said, “You really have the persona down.”

He turned his head to look at her. There was something primal about the fact that she felt safe enough to expose her throat the way she was, when he was an enemy. A predator. The evil god who’d come to Earth with a grudge against his brother and unleashed his rage on an unsuspecting planet.

Maybe this was exactly her point.

“We’re all only as much as the stories we tell about ourselves,” he finally said.

With a soft laugh, she said, “What about the stories other people tell about you?”

“They should match up, don’t you think?”

Finally, she opened her eyes, slitting them at him. “Sometimes people don’t see themselves very clearly.”

The implications of what she was saying were clear enough, which meant it was time to get off the subject. “You can’t study the Bifrost, you know,” he said, _apropos_ of nothing, but thinking of what she’d said to him the first time he’d come to see her. She’d said she wanted to stay alive to get as much research done as possible. “It’s magic. There’s nothing for you to take readings or run tests on.”

She lifted her head and looked at him smugly. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I have tons of readings on the Bifrost. How do you think I met your brother in the first place?”

“You have readings on the effect the Bifrost has when it transports Asgardians _here_ ,” he corrected her. “What it does to your atmosphere, magnetosphere, whatever.” If it surprised her that he knew these words, she didn’t show it. Just once, it would be nice to tell someone he knew these things because he was well read, and that he’d been one of the only people on Asgard to bother reading Midgard books. Clearly, he needed to make friends with more easily-impressed mortals. “You don’t have readings on how the Bifrost _works_. You can’t.”

“I told you. I don’t believe in magic,” Jane said. “Maybe you call it magic, but it has a scientific explanation.”

He stared at her, his lips thinning. After a second, he twirled his fingers, and with a shimmer of green, everything changed. They were no longer in the tiny, hemmed in city park with its caged greenery and contrived serenity. Asgard lay before them, Asgard as it lived in his memory, light shining warm and golden through the columns of the palace, bright blue sky, water sparkling cerulean under a summer sun. Water trickled from a fountain in the room, running down the same path in the stone that it had taken for thousands of years. There were books open on the ledge of the balcony and intricately woven rugs on the stone floor. The cold fireplace needed to be cleaned out, because he’d hated letting the servants in to do it. They moved things.

His quarters, which he hadn’t slept in or been inside for over a decade, and which he’d never lay eyes on again.

A skiff chugged as it flew by overhead and Jane’s eyes followed it before she looked down at him. His suit was gone, replaced by his favorite tunic and trousers that he’d worn when he didn’t have anywhere to be on Asgard. Casual, for him, though the tunic was still threaded with gold, and a complicated pattern of knots ran around the cuffs of both sleeves. Then, she looked at herself. She was in Asgardian garb, the same blue dress and silver breastplate she’d worn the day he’d helped Thor escape Asgard with her. Her arms were healthy and whole looking, unmarked with needle pricks and adhesive outlines from IVs. She held her hands up and looked at them, and then, giving him an unreadable look, got to her feet to gaze into the fountain.

As she stared into it, looking at her reflection, at the long, healthy hair on her head, he still couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Then, she turned back to him. Her eyes were bright with anger. “Stop it,” she said, her voice quiet but hard as iron. “This is cruel.”

“This is what you could have had,” Loki said. Yes, it was cruel. _He_ was cruel. That was the story he told about himself, and he’d be damned if she was going to tell him that she saw through it. That he couldn’t see himself clearly. What kind of person destroyed his home? What kind of person destroyed an entire universe, if not a cruel one?

“I—don’t— _want—it_ ,” she said.

A thin smile ghosted across his face. “Then you’re a fool, Jane Foster. More of a fool than my brother for falling in love with you. And I don’t say _that_ lightly.”

Her fists clenched. “Get rid of it,” she said, her tone steely.

Loki waved a hand and his room faded. His suit returned, her t-shirt and yoga pants, both several sizes too large and hanging off her jutting bones. Her eyes were still blazing, though. No glamor there. “Go away,” she said.

A twinge of guilt bit at him. “I should walk you back—”

“ _Leave_ ,” she repeated, and for a moment, it was possible to believe she might get better. Anyone with fire like that in their voice couldn’t just _die_.

He did as she asked.

As he walked back to the Sanctum—a stupid, traitorous part of his mind had nearly slipped and thought of it as home, gods, he’d rather die than consider that place home—something odd happened in his chest. There was—an ache.

It had been a complicated illusion. Such things could be tiring. It was that, nothing more.

_Liar_. As though he didn’t know exactly what it was. It was just so much _easier_ to pretend, to brush it away, to tell himself he didn’t care. Caring was hard. Caring made your vulnerable. Caring made you hurt.

He cared too much, and where had it gotten him? The death that he’d chosen for himself had been taken away, and now instead of giving his life for his brother, he had the deaths of trillions on his conscience. The fact that he _cared_ had been taken advantage of—by a different version of himself. Who better than to trap him into something terrible _but_ himself? He’d always been his own worst enemy, but it had been taken to a new level of late.

It was stupid to care about Jane Foster. She didn’t want his concern and she certainly didn’t want his pity. Not, to be perfectly honest, an attitude he was unfamiliar with.

The blocks had fallen away while his thoughts scratched at him and he looked up, surprised to find himself at the Sanctum already.

He put his hands in his pockets and looked at it, craning his neck to see sunlight glinting off the Oculus. What if he just kept walking? What if he never went back? What if he went to New Asgard—or what if he left the planet entirely in search of Thor?

Snorting at himself, he rolled his eyes. Where would he go, truly, if not straight back to the Sanctum? He might be no one’s prisoner in fact, but the effect was the same. There was nowhere for him. He had no home. He was, as he’d said to Thor on Sakaar, set adrift.

For Loki, that had only been months ago. Thor probably didn’t even remember it.

With a sigh, he trudged inside, pottering around the study for awhile, telling himself he was going to do something useful, like finally attempt to do magic the way the Masters of the Mystic Arts did, or actually learn one of their languages instead of depending on the Allspeak. He was getting there with English.

Instead, he went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea.

He was watching steam curlicue when Strange walked in. The wizard paused in the doorway, as though he hadn’t expected Loki to be there. Likely he hadn’t. It wasn’t exactly one of Loki’s preferred haunts in the house, mainly because it saw too much foot traffic. There was far too much opportunity to run into either Wong or Strange there, not to mention anyone else from Kamar-Taj who decided to drop by.

“Hi,” Strange said.

His eyes remaining on the rising steam, Loki said, “No witty comment? No sarcastic quip? You disappoint me, Strange.”

“Well, you’re not much fun when you’re miserable,” Strange said. Loki glanced up at him, and the wizard flashed a smile—a _smile_ —at him.

It was a nice smile, but then, he already knew that.

Taking a few steps into the kitchen, Strange rested his hands on the back of the chair opposite Loki, and added, his tone devoid, for once, of dryness, “It’s when you’re angry that you’re fun.”

With a soft snort, Loki said, “I can get angry, if you’d prefer.”

Strange pulled the chair out and sat down. He looked at his hands, hesitating, and then he pulled the gloves off. The scars on his hands stood out, livid against his skin. “Oh, don’t bother on my account,” he said. “You know, someday it might be nice to have a conversation where you’re not screaming at me or—well, this.”

“No offense, but I wouldn’t say I aspire to having conversations with you at all.” Loki rested his fingertips on the handle of his mug. Except he’d situated himself in the kitchen, hadn’t he? He looked up and met Strange’s eyes. “How do you humans do it?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Strange said.

Running a finger up and down the mug handle, Loki said, “Die.”

Strange raised his eyebrows. “Probably the same way Asgardians die.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“You mean how do we live, when compared to you, we have no time at all?”

Loki looked at him without blinking.

Strange looked down at his hands, then laid them flat against the table. Loki wondered if he did it to still the tremor. “The easy answer is that to us it doesn’t feel like nothing.”

“But it does,” Loki said. “I see how you live.” Something about that made him color slightly. “Not _you_ specifically, but humans. You throw money around, you eat and drink with abandon, you rush everywhere, you kill this planet with your insistence on taking everything for yourselves _now_. On some level, you _do_ know you’ll barely be here.”

Tilting his head at Loki, Strange said, “And on the other hand, there’s an entire industry dedicated to selling us on the idea that life is short, so live it to its fullest.”

“By purchasing something, I imagine?”

Strange smiled. “Look at you. You understand us mortals better than you let on.”

He considered that, and then he said, “Of course I understand you. Why else would I be so scornful?”

Rolling his eyes, Strange said, “Right. I forgot for a second that you do contempt like it’s going out of style.”

“I wouldn’t talk, Doctor,” Loki retorted.

Strange looked at him, his eyes narrowing, and then he held his hands out. A clear message. _Truce._ With a disgruntled expression, Loki slouched in his chair and put his fingertips on the mug again. It was still too hot. Absently, he funneled a spell through his fingers to cool it to a temperature that he could drink.

The steam stopped rising and Loki took a sip. Strange was staring at him with sudden interest. “What?” Loki asked

Gesturing, Strange said, “Your magic.”

“What about it?” Loki said frostily.

“It’s…intriguing.”

“Yes, I suppose it would be, given that it’s vastly superior to your own.” The gibe got no reaction, as Strange had clearly been expecting it. Besides, it wasn’t one of Loki’s best efforts. Too obvious, too pedestrian. Strange would expect Loki to sneer at his magic.

Tilting his head, Strange said, “You cast spells without incantations or gestures.”

“Correct,” Loki said. “So do you.”

“Sometimes.” Still looking thoughtful, Strange said, “Here, I can.”

Loki blinked and leaned forward a little. “What does that mean?”

With a vague motion, Strange said, “There’s kind of, I guess you’d call it ambient magic? Like it’s just kind of in the air here.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Loki murmured.

This seemed to surprise Strange. “Really?”

Raising an eyebrow, Loki said, “Yes. Can’t you feel magic?”

With a tiny smile, Strange replied, “Depends how hard the pissed off god is flinging furniture with his telekinesis.” When Loki stiffened, Strange held up a hand and said, “That’s a joke.”

Loki vacillated between getting huffy—perhaps storming off—or accepting this. His grip on the mug tightened, but gradually, his shoulders loosened. “This whole house is humming with it,” he offered at last. “As a rule, that’s unusual on Earth.” He hesitated. “There are places of power. I suppose the Sanctum must be built on one. Which suggests that _someone_ could feel magic.”

Strange nodded slowly. “Yeah…you have a point.” Splaying his fingers on the table and staring at them, he said musingly, “Maybe it wasn’t a human who chose these spots. Who knows? It could have been an Asgardian.”

“You suggest,” Loki said delicately, “that an Asgardian would concern themselves _that_ much with a lesser Realm?” Strange raised his eyebrows meaningfully and Loki snorted. Add them to the list, if they had. “I’m surprised you restrained yourself from telling me I shouldn’t talk.”

“I can tell when I’m being baited, believe it or not.” Strange raised a hand and ran it through his hair. Loki watched his hand tremble, then looked up, meeting Strange’s eyes without meaning to. Quickly, he flicked his gaze away, but not before seeing another sardonic smile appear on Strange’s face.

Loki _hated_ that he liked that smile.

Leaning forward, Strange said, “So—I’m guessing you’re going to refuse to answer, but that’s never stopped me from asking.” When Loki arched an eyebrow, another smile flashed across Strange’s face and he asked, “How _do_ you do your magic?”

He opened his mouth to do exactly what Strange had predicted and say there was absolutely no way he’d answer that question. But then, slowly, he closed it and sipped at his tea again. “Not like you do,” he finally replied. Even if he hadn’t devoured several books on the subject now that he’d been given access to the library here, he’d had conversations with the other Strange about it.

_That_ Strange, the one from the other universe, had said, “He always wanted to know more about it, too.” He hadn’t quite met Loki’s eyes. Loki had shifted uncomfortably, knowing who ‘he’ was. Knowing, by then, and despite the fact that no one had come out and said it, that there had been something between the other universe’s Loki and Strange. Grief was an old companion of Loki’s, and he recognized it on another person. He also had wondered why Strange had treated him so…carefully. It had never quite been distance, but rather, like Loki was someone that Strange had been hearing about for a long time, had felt like he’d known, and once they’d finally met, realized that they were, in fact, strangers. Loki had always gotten the sense that Strange had wanted them, in some way, to remain strangers.

Meanwhile, _this_ universe’s Strange was watching him, waiting. It was a surprising quality that he had, actually. Even when they were at each other’s throats, he always seemed willing to wait for Loki to make a move. To not force him into something.

Loki licked his lips, feeling something like nerves coil through him. Talking about his magic had never come naturally to him. Only Frigga had talked to him about it. Just one more reason to mourn her. She’d been his only connection to this thing inside him that was so powerful and so defining. Others had—at best—not understood it. At worst, they’d treated it like a disease. A defect. On _The Statesman_ , Thor had begun to awkwardly ask Loki if his magic could help with problems, but it hadn’t come easily. Still, he’d be trying, and that counted.

The thought made his chest hurt. Where was Thor right now? Maybe when they saw each other again, Thor would be back to thinking his magic was something to scorn. Maybe Thor wouldn’t even want him around. Like on Sakaar.

But the thing was, Strange understood magic. Strange _got it._ Even if the human’s magic was a bit pathetic, Loki also knew it could be powerful. And he was asking; he was showing interest. That was worth something.

“It’s always been there,” Loki said, then laid a palm on his chest. “Here, I should say.”

Looking surprised, Strange said, “You just knew how to do it?” For once, he actually looked impressed.

Loki shook his head. “No. I was taught.” When Strange raised his eyebrows, Loki arched one in return. He couldn’t possibly think Loki was going to elaborate on this. Talking about his mother with this human was simply something he wasn’t prepared to do. Shrugging, he said, “For you, it’s a skill anyone can learn. On Asgard, you’re either magical or you aren’t. The ability was rare.”

Using the past tense to refer to his people still hurt. It probably always would. It was true—life _was_ short, even for Asgardians. No one knew that better than him, he supposed. Snatched from the death he was supposed to have suffered. Yet another near miss, another almost-death. It was just another of the worst parts of this. He wasn’t sure he was glad he was alive. All the magic in the world couldn’t fix everything that was still wrong. His brother was a mess. Loki had abandoned him and he didn’t know how he was going to repair that damage. He didn’t know if he was even going to be given the chance. So much stood in the way—time, space, Strange, the Guardians of the Galaxy, what was left of the Avengers, possibly even what was left of Asgard. Himself.

Who wanted him around? None of the above. Including himself.

“Why do you care?” he asked Strange, hearing the rancor in his tone. Barbed wire, shattered glass. Raw pain that had nowhere to go. He’d never been good at expressing his hurt healthily.

Strange clasped his hands on the table and shrugged. “It’s interesting. You get that, right? I noticed you’ve been reading up on our magic.” He gave Loki a considering look. “You seem like someone who wants to know everything.”

“Presumptuous of you,” Loki muttered.

“Probably, but I recognize a kindred spirit.”

At this, Loki’s eyes flicked up to meet Strange’s. Strange was watching him, his expression impossible to read. Something sharp and swollen and angry ballooned in Loki’s chest, and he stood up from the table abruptly, leaving his tea only half drunk. Why would he want to be a kindred spirit of this man? On the contrary, he wished they’d never met.

“Spare me,” Loki snarled, turning his back on Strange and walking out.

The wizard could go to Hel. This whole planet could go to Hel. Kindred spirits? There was nothing he had in common with any of these people, not Stephen Strange, not Jane Foster, none of them. They were weak, they were mortal, and he didn’t need their friendship or their company. If he didn’t chase them off simply by being himself, they would only die. Jane was going to die very shortly, and he’d still managed to chase her off before that. He was poison, he was a curse, and he needed to get out of here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a comment if you're enjoying this! I love to know what people think! Kudos are also greatly appreciated 😊 
> 
> You should also come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/)! I like to talk about Loki.


	8. Chapter 8

_Loki finds himself fighting a war he didn’t know was taking place. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t happening until whatever occurred in the future gave him the opportunity to steal the Tesseract in 2012. Or maybe all of that already had happened, which is why he’s here. He thinks he understands it, but then he attempts to put it into words and it doesn’t make any sense._

_The enemy is slightly easier to understand. There’s a Kree Eternal called Ultimus trying to take over the multiverse—and Loki, by taking the Tesseract in 2012 and splitting the timeline, gave him a foothold into this universe. The things Loki saw attacking Strange on the day he arrived here are his foot soldiers, people from the planets and universes Ultimus has already taken over, twisted beyond recognition into mindless monsters._

_And Strange tells him what he knows about the life Loki was supposed to live,. Or rather, the death he was supposed to die. Thanos killed him on_ The Statesman. _The remaining Asgardians eventually made their way to Earth and settled in a place called New Asgard. Loki asks what it’s like. He wonders if it’s what Thor and he imagined it to be. Strange just shrugs and says he doesn’t know._

_Strange tells him that Thor lived, but that something was wrong with him._

We don’t do well without the other _, Loki wants to say, but doesn’t. Even though, as the months pass, he thinks he could say this to Strange. He thinks Strange already knows, because here, in this universe, Thor is dead._

_It isn’t even a surprise when Strange tells him. Somehow, Loki knows. Why else would any version of him sacrifice his life? Always for Thor. Only for Thor. Loki hates that he was dragged into this by another version of himself, but he understands that part, at least._

_There’s a lot that he comes to understand as time passes and he’s trapped there. Because the Tesseract won’t work._

_For a while, he tries every day to make it bring him somewhere. Asgard, Germany, the Bronx. The other side of Bleecker Street. Anywhere. Even to the other side of the room. It doesn’t respond at all. It doesn’t do anything. It just sits there, glowing serenely blue, a useless bauble. This is what he gave his people up for. This is why he’s here, in some roundabout, time-bending way. This isn’t the Tesseract he took from Asgard and a mad part of Loki’s mind thinks that it knows that and that it doesn’t like him._

_Finally, two months to the day after he arrives, Stephen (at some point, he became Stephen, not Strange; Loki doesn’t know when this was and he doesn’t care to examine why) says, “We have to figure out why it’s not working for you.”_

_Loki is staring out the window at the building across the street. Last week it started phasing in and out of existence. He wonders if the other universe,_ his _universe, is affected by it. Stephen, Wong, and he have had conversations about whether or not Ultimus’s creatures can use these phased spots to cross over. They haven’t come to a conclusion._

_Looking towards Stephen, Loki asks, “And how do you propose we do that?”_

_Stephen closes the book he’s reading. It’s something that Loki appreciates about him. There’s nothing to be gained from studying, no hitherto unknown way to save this universe buried in a book somewhere. The choice has been made. When Loki puts the Tesseract back, this universe will cease to exist. Sometimes, he thinks Stephen is looking forward to it. He’s deeply unhappy. Grieving. He’s never once talked about it. Loki both wishes he would and dreads the idea that he will. But Stephen still reads because he’s curious, because his mind is never satisfied._

_“We can do some tests on it,” Stephen says._

_Raising an eyebrow, Loki says, “Tests? That sounds very…scientific. And what you and I do isn’t science. The stone isn’t_ science _.”_

_“Yeah, well. I was a neurosurgeon, so old habits die hard.” There’s a thoughtful expression on his face. “Magic and science, best of both worlds, right?”_

_Loki thinks about the conversations Thor and he had about Earth on_ The Statesman _. About the good they could do for Midgard, what they could bring to it. “We’ll make each other better,” Thor had said._

_At which Loki had smiled fondly. Maybe a bit proudly. “Now you really_ do _sound like a king.”_

_“It’s true,” Thor had said, though he sounded embarrassed. “Asgard could learn much from Earth.”_

_“And Earth could learn much from Asgard,” Loki had said, his eyebrow still arched._

_Thor had nodded. “Yes. I’m glad you understand.” Actually, Loki wasn’t sure he had. Or rather, he had understood what Thor was saying, but he wasn’t sure he entirely—what was the phrase humans used?—bought into it. But there was no denying that Asgard was gone because of mistakes that seemed uniquely Asgardian._

_“Our technology will be welcomed, I’m sure. Though they’ll probably think it’s magic.” Loki had tried to keep the trepidation out of his tone. If the humans thought Asgardian tech was magic, what would they think about his_ actual _magic? Then again, maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The real question, anyway, wasn’t really what they’d think of his magic. It was what they’d think about_ him _. He didn’t know how much of the general populace knew who he was, but the Avengers did, and he didn’t think they would welcome him. And he didn’t have much faith in Thor and Bruce to convince them that he_ should _be welcomed._

_He had almost opened his mouth to say something, but then thought better of it. It was a conversation they needed to have, but it didn’t need to be then._

_Loki shakes the memory off and focuses on the wizard in front of him. The humans of this universe certainly know all about magic. It’s failing them, but at least they have a front row seat to the fact that it exists._

_Getting up and coming over to Loki, Stephen gestures and says, “Let’s see it.” When Loki pulls the Tesseract from his pocket dimension, Strange transports them to the Chamber of Relics and points to the table. “You can put it down.”_

_Gladly. To be honest, he just wants to be rid of the thing. But it’s his way home, so he can’t. Strange could send him back to his own universe with his sling ring, but he won’t. Anyway, Loki is dead there. Supposed to be dead. Was dead. He can’t risk another timeline divergence by appearing where and when he’s not supposed to. How will he know when he’s allowed to appear? Stephen can’t answer that._

_Loki sets it down with ostentatious ceremony, then holds out his hands. “Start your experiments, Doctor.” Stephen leans over the table, studying the Tesseract, seeming loathe to touch it, and Loki sighs. “It won’t hurt you,” he says. “It won’t do anything. It’s like it’s…dead.”_

_Why would he say that? Stephen gives him a look that expresses the same question. Loki doesn’t know. When he took the Tesseract from the weapons vault, when he had it with him on_ The Statesman _, he could…feel it. That sounds stupid, but it’s true. It was like a presence. He wonders if Thanos can feel the stones. Any of them? All of them? It’s unclear to him if you need to be sane to feel them or completely gone in madness._

_It’s tempting to ask Stephen if he feels the Time Stone, but he decides not to. Perhaps in this universe, the Infinity Stones simply don’t work that way. Because aside from that first pulse of rejection from the Tesseract two months ago, Loki has felt nothing from it. This isn’t his Tesseract, though. This is_ his. _The other Loki’s. Of course it won’t do anything. It senses he’s an interloper, an imposter. A pretender._

_“I’m not as confident as you are about that,” Stephen says. “I’ve heard stories about what this thing can do.”_

_“Hmph.” Loki crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, this was your idea. I don’t know what you want me to do.”_

_Stephen glances at him. As usual, their eyes don’t quite meet. “I’m going to try a few things. Step back. Or—” He smiles slightly. “—Don’t, since you don’t think it poses any danger.”_

_With a mirthless smile, Loki replies, “I never said it doesn’t pose any danger.” But he doesn’t step back. Instead, he leans closer to it, curious if anything will happen._

_Calling up a mandala as a shield on one of his hands, Strange makes a complicated series of gestures, then holds his other hand out. Even if Loki has no idea what the spell does, he can feel it. He watches, leaning farther forward, and waits for something to happen._

_Nothing does. Loki raises an eyebrow and Strange gives him a look. “Why don’t you just say ‘I told you so?’” Stephen asks._

_Eyebrow still arched, Loki replies, “Because that would be so petty, don’t you think?” He reaches for the Tesseract, but just before his fingers touch it, it pulses. Anger and warning floods Loki’s brain and he draws back. Stephen is watching him, his brow furrowed a little._

_“What?” Strange asks._

_Loki closes his hands into fists. His fingers are tingling, as though he’s held them too close to a flame for too long. “I don’t think it likes me,” he finally says._


	9. Chapter 9

A week passed. Loki had half expected Strange and Wong to revoke his access to the library. They didn’t. So he spent most of his time there, propped on his favorite bench, which caught the afternoon light. The Masters stayed out of his way and he stayed out of theirs, but he didn’t leave the Sanctum. Had he left, he worried that they would have caught on to what he was planning, which was his escape.

He didn’t want to be seen testing Strange’s binding spells, the ones keeping him confined to Manhattan. So he read about them instead, teaching himself how to do magic the way they did it. It was horrible, it grated on his inborn magic, but he needed to test his ability to break it.

The first time he produced a mandala with energy drawn from another dimension, he snapped his wrists and vanished it, afraid that Wong or Strange would catch him and startled by the prickle of pain that crawled along his spine, up his brain stem, and inside his skull. But then, he took a deep breath and summoned it again, cast a spell, and left it suspended there, where he could dismantle it with his own magic.

Obviously, whatever Strange had cooked up would be more sophisticated. But Loki knew he could poke enough holes in it to slip through.

All of this was a lie. Well, not the part about him learning how to do magic the way he did, but the reasons behind it. He didn’t need to test their magic, he didn’t need his own to escape from here. He had something in his possession that could remove him from the Sanctum, from New York, from Earth, instantly, if he chose to use it.

The truth, though, was that he was afraid to. It may not have technically been his folly which had led to the twisted knot that had intertwined his life with that of a Loki from an alternate universe, but it _was_ still, in some way, his folly. He’d been the person who had made the decision to take the Tesseract once. Even though he hadn’t done it, he would have done it. He _had_ done it, and created another universe. Lives that he hadn’t lived, deaths he hadn’t died. It made his head hurt, it made him sick.

It made him terrified to use the Tesseract.

Oh, of course he still had it. Please. What did you think this was?

When Loki had gone to 2012, he’d been instructed to put the Tesseract ‘back.’ Except to do so seemed as though it would entail unnecessary risk, too many openings for things to go wrong and for yet another branched timeline to open up. Why, Loki had thought, would he not just prevent the Tesseract from falling into his own hands in the first place?

And that had been easy. The Hulk had come barreling out of the stairwell and sent Stark (poorly disguised, but apparently effectively enough for his idiot brother and his even more idiotic friends) and the briefcase containing the Tesseract flying. But before the cube could skitter across the floor to his past self’s feet, Loki scooped it up, slotted it back into place in the briefcase, and approached the Avengers.

“Is this important?” he—rather, she—had asked, extending the briefcase towards Thor.

Thor had looked around, his mouth opening as he realized the Tesseract had been out of not just his, but _everyone’s_ sight for gods knew how long, and then reached for it. “Yes, I—thank you.” He gave her a funny look, as though he recognized her, but she was already turning away. She’d glamored her black hair to red, blue eyes to green, and had eschewed boots for ballet flats, which was a very un-Loki choice. But she couldn’t resist keeping her own face, and she caught the flicker of recognition and uncertainty on both her brother’s face _and_ her own. Well, not hers, but his, the past self that would now be returning to Asgard, to be sentenced to life imprisonment, to stew in his rage, bitterness, and loneliness for a year, to set in motion a chain of events that would lead to his mother’s death. To steal the throne, to get the best of his father (had he, though?), to stumble towards reconciliation with his brother.

To live his life, in other words.

She didn’t feel the other universe go. You couldn’t feel something that had never existed in the first place.

She’d walked away and gone to stand in the stairwell that the Hulk had recently vacated. Eyes closed, hands clenched into fists, not sure if she’d just done the right thing or something so terrible that there would never be words to describe it. And then the Tesseract had done—something. She’d still been deciding where to go, what to do, when it flashed and opened a portal around her that she hadn’t had a hand in, spitting her out in front of 177A Bleecker Street just as Stephen Strange was approaching.

Strange had stared at her and she had belatedly remembered to hide the Tesseract away in her pocket dimension. The damage was done, though. “ _Loki?_ ” Strange had asked incredulously.

Transforming, Loki straightened up, ready to draw his daggers but not actually holding them. “What gave it away?” he asked.

“You mean, besides the Tesseract?” Strange had said, his incredulity giving way to his preferred tone of wry know-it-allness. “You look like yourself. But I’m not sure if red’s your color.” The two of them had stared at each other for a long moment, Loki on the verge of running, only echoed words from another universe keeping him there. Finally, Strange said, “You know I have a million questions.”

Loki’s fingers itched to wrap around his blades. Now that the shock of appearing here was wearing off, he was remembering the first time he’d met _this_ Strange. Embarrassment and humiliation. Great start, really. “I’ll give you one.”

Strange had nodded. “Why come to me?”

The Tesseract may have made the decision for him, but it was always the decision that he would have made. He understood that suddenly. With a bitter laugh, Loki had said, “Because you told me to, Strange. You told me to, in a different universe.”

It was starting to seem like a long time ago. _The Statesman_ seemed like another life, the slaughter of his already decimated people a nightmare that couldn’t possibly be real. Thanos torturing Thor, Loki giving up the Tesseract, even though Thor had told him in no uncertain terms that he was absolutely not to do this.

When the confession had ripped itself from his chest, “He’s here for me, I took the Tesseract from the vault before I put Surtur’s crown in the Eternal Flame, that’s what he wants,” he’d thought Thor might toss him out the airlock with the Tesseract stuffed in his mouth. He’d wanted to weep, because everything was about to be taken from him, and once more, he had no one but himself to blame. The tragedy of his brother telling him moments previously that everything would work out made it worse than Loki could ever have imagined. He’d shown his vulnerability and Thor had reassured him. _Don’t worry,_ had been the undertone to the words he’d spoken out loud. _I’ll keep you safe._

But Thor had just sighed heavily, grabbed Loki’s shoulder, and said, “This is what we’re going to do.”

_We_. That was the thing with Thor. It had _always_ been ‘we.’ They had always been a unit, the two of them. The Odinsons. Why had Loki lost sight of that truth, and why had it taken him so long to find his way back to it?

Loki slammed the book shut that he was reading. He had abandoned his brother. There was no other way to look at it. Somewhere, deep inside him, he’d wanted to escape, wanted to live, and he hadn’t fought hard enough when that possibility had presented itself. For too long, he’d seen himself as a victim of circumstance, the ship of his life blown by the winds of fate, foundered on rocks he couldn’t see more times than he could count. But that was growing up, wasn’t it? Admitting the hand you had in weaving the threads of your own fate, learning not to blame the Norns for the weft of wreckage you left in your wake? Just because he’d told himself he had no choice in something, just because it had felt that way at the time, didn’t make it so.

Self-loathing twisted in his gut. An old friend. Or companion, perhaps. Loki didn’t have any friends.

Jane Foster had been his friend. Maybe. Until he’d pushed her away, because no good came from loving him, or even liking him. His brother, his mother, his father, they were all proof of that. The version of himself that had sent him to destroy his universe, more proof. Strange, the other Strange, had loved him, and look what he’d gotten for it.

Closing his eyes and sighing, he did his best to push away the guilt at how he’d treated Jane the last time he’d seen her. It had taken up residence in his heart though, along with all his other regrets and mistakes. Incredible that there was still room in there for more.

He stared at the cover of the book, the sun glinting off the gilded title. At this rate, he was going to have to ask Wong or Strange to bring books back from Kamar-Taj for him to read.

When he looked up, Strange was standing in the doorway.

Loki started and swore, which made Strange smile slightly, then say, “Wow. Language, Your Highness.”

“Please do me a favor and shut up,” Loki said, though his heart wasn’t really in it.

Strange’s smile got a little wider. Insufferable man. Insufferable man with that horrid, infectious smile. “Want to go for a walk?” Strange asked.

Loki blinked, then looked around the room, as though someone else was there, and _this_ was the person who Strange was actually addressing. Of course, there wasn’t anyone else there. “Why?” he asked suspiciously.

“You’re looking a little pale. I thought some sun might do you some good,” Strange said in a very serious tone.

“You said the weather was going to turn. It never did.”

A smile twitched at Strange’s lips. “Well, it’s not like I can tell the future.”

What was this? Loki narrowed his eyes at Strange, watching him for some sign of what this new game was. Of course…Strange hadn’t played games with him. Even when Loki had leveled a knife at his throat, he’d never played games. He’d been brutally honest with Loki, which—he scowled, mostly at himself. Which he’d _wanted_ to be a game, because the alternative was that Strange was telling the truth, and that Loki needed to do what he said. Unless he wanted to stumble backwards along this path that he’d started walking. Always a possibility, but he was still willing to fight for forward progress.

“Look,” Strange said, nonchalance dripping from his tone, like he wasn’t talking to the Norse God of Mischief, “it’s not exactly hitting the gym, but I could use the exercise. Sometimes company’s nice. Are you coming or not?”

Why did Loki like the fact that Strange didn’t care whether he was talking to a god or not?

“Fine,” he said warily. He stood up. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere specific,” Strange said. There was a whoosh deep in Loki’s ears, and suddenly the two of them were standing by the front door.

“Damn you,” Loki spat. Strange just looked amused. Right, he’d said Loki was more fun when he was angry. It was a bit sick, really.

Opening the door and motioning to Loki, Strange said, “After you.”

Giving him an imperious look, Loki said, “I prefer not to turn my back on my enemies.”

“You’re the one with the knives,” Strange said, his tone unfazed.

With a sneer, Loki said, “You’re _so_ funny.”

At this, Strange shot a grin at him. “You know what, your sarcasm aside, I actually really appreciate that. No one laughs at my jokes at Kamar-Taj.”

“That must be hard for you,” Loki said.

They stepped outside. It wasn’t quite true that the weather hadn’t turned. The days were definitely getting cooler, not to mention shorter, and the leaves had gone from full blazing autumn glory to dryer, browner, and more brittle. Parts of the sidewalk were carpeted with fallen leaves, which crunched under their feet as they walked.

At first, they didn’t speak, allowing the noise of traffic and distant planes to fill the silence between them. As it stretched, though, Loki wondered if agreeing to this had been a mistake. He didn’t need to be with another person to not speak; he was perfectly good at doing that by himself. Being in his own head, his own thoughts keeping him company as no one else had ever been able to, was something he was used to.

Of course, he’d brought it on himself a bit, hadn’t he? It wasn’t as though Thor hadn’t tried to draw him out sometimes, when they’d been younger. He’d just…given up, because Loki had pushed him away too many times.

Regrets. Sometimes he felt like they were choking him.

Sometimes he woke feeling like he was literally choking. But when he tried to remember the nightmare he’d been having, it was always just out of reach. Not that he’d never had any shortage of nightmares. The inability to remember this one wasn’t such a tragedy.

“So tell me something,” Strange said with no preface.

Loki waited for a question. When none came, he glanced at Strange. “Tell you what?”

With a shrug, Strange said, “Anything. Something interesting. Or not. Up to you, I’m not picky.”

Loki just stared.

With a slight smile, Strange said, “Okay, want me to start? I’ve lived in Manhattan my entire life. I mean, aside from the time I spent at Kamar-Taj.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed? Your life is a heartbeat to me,” Loki said, though his sneer wasn’t as pronounced as it could be. When Strange looked at him, Loki glanced away towards the sky, which was clear blue. The chill in the air seemed to clarify it, despite the mass of humanity pumping pollution into it from their cars and buses and planes. “How old are you?” he finally asked.

When he looked back, Strange seemed surprised. “Forty-one,” he said.

“Is that old?” Loki asked. “For humans?”

“Christ, I hope not.”

Sticking his hands in his pockets, feeling ridiculously stung by Strange’s tone, he said, “How should I know?”

Strange still looked surprised. “You wouldn’t. I guess it’s like dog years to you. So how old are _you?_ ”

Loki considered not answering. Then again, what did it matter? “One thousand and fifty-two,” he said.

With a low whistle, Strange asked, “Do you still celebrate all your birthdays?” When Loki gave him a sharp look, he said, “That was a joke.”

Flatly, Loki replied, “I can see why they don’t find you amusing at your wizard school.” But he caught Strange’s eyes and knew there was a mischievous glint in his. If the twitch of a smile on Strange’s face was any indication, he saw it.

“I wonder what the conversion rate is,” Strange mused. “Want me to come up with a formula?”

“I’d really rather you didn’t.” Loki rolled his eyes. “My life is static compared to yours, leave it at that, Strange. While you wither and grow old, I’ll appear to age one or two of your years, at the most.”

“Cheerful,” Strange snorted.

Loki held up a hand in both a shrug and acknowledgement of this point. “I’m old. You can’t contemplate the number of years I’ve lived.”

Strange narrowed his eyes and said, “Oh, I don’t know if I’d go that far.” When Loki looked at him sharply, Strange just gave him a close-lipped smile. And Loki knew _that_ conversation was over. Not that he cared what Strange meant. He wasn’t interested. Strange didn’t interest him. He couldn’t care less. Their relationship was temporary but it wasn’t temporary _enough._

“Okay,” Strange said. “I gave you an example of how this is done. Now it’s your turn.”

Raising an eyebrow, Loki said, “Maybe I want to hear about growing up here. And how you’ve never left. You surprise me a bit, Strange. I would have thought you more worldly than that.”

“Who says I’m not worldly?” Strange said. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been to every continent except Antarctica and I’ve visited thirty-two countries. That’s pretty good.”

“Yes well, you’ll forgive me if I’m not all that impressed, since I’ve visited at least that many _planets_.”

Strange gave him an innocent look. “Oh wait, I forgot the hundreds of different dimensions I’ve been in.”

With a smirk, Loki said, “Fine. I concede. I’ve only been to two. Three, if we count the one _you_ stuck me in.”

“Yeah, I’d say no hard feelings, but there obviously are.”

“And there always will be,” Loki said, not unpleasantly, though there was steel in his tone.

It was too much to expect Strange to look regretful about the way he’d humiliated Loki the first time they’d met. Not that Loki had spared much thought to the human wizard in the days, weeks, and months following their first encounter in New York, but the few times he’d remembered, he’d burned with rage and shame over it.

Wryly, Strange said, “Maybe when I’m on my death bed—you know, old and withered—you’ll forgive me.”

“Strange, a word of advice: don’t count on me being anywhere _near_ your deathbed.” Loki rolled his eyes. As though they were _friends_ , and not two enemies forced into proximity by circumstance. Though, Loki supposed they weren’t technically _enemies._ They were nominally on the same side, or at least they had been. At this point, the side Loki was on was still very much up in the air. He was out for himself and no one else currently.

Well, himself and Thor, even if Thor didn’t know he was alive.

“Fine, point taken.” Nothing in Strange’s tone indicated he was offended. In fact, he seemed amused, if anything. “So you want to know about living here? Ask away.”

Loki did not, actually, particularly care about Strange’s life in this city, because he didn’t care about Strange. But if it was a way to avoid sharing something about himself—anything about himself, he’d keep him talking. He’d always been good at that. His mother had always told him he was a good listener. It was probably more fair to say that he preferred to keep his silence and let others yammer on than do the yammering himself.

Shrugging, Loki said, “Oh, I wouldn’t know where to begin.” This was true. He was Asgardian, a prince, second in line to the throne of a world of gods. What did he know about how humans grew up?

_You could have asked Jane_ , part of his mind sneered. He batted it down.

Still, he wanted to keep Strange talking, so he asked, “You have universities on Earth, yes? Please tell me you do.”

Rolling his eyes, Strange said, “Yeah, we have universities. I’m sure nothing as impressive as wherever you went.”

“I never went to a university,” Loki let slip before he realized what he was saying. Shit. Now Strange knew something about him. A stupid, innocuous fact, but still.

And of course, Strange looked interested. “No? Why?”

“We were talking about you.”

“Oh, come on.”

It occurred to Loki that Strange knew exactly what he was doing and had been playing along until this point. Curse him. “A Prince of Asgard would never be sent to attend university,” Loki finally replied. “Our lessons were private and only continued for as long as my mother could convince Thor to sit still for them. After that—” He shrugged. “—I continued them on my own.”

If Strange said this sounded like something he’d do as well, Loki might just kill him right there on the sidewalk, consequences be damned. He didn’t, though. Instead, he looked like he was trying to rein in an overeager desire to ask a million questions. And that, Loki was irritated to find himself thinking, was very much something he understood.

“So,” Strange said, in a tone that was far too casual to fool Loki, “what does a Prince of Asgard study?”

With a snort, Loki said, “I imagine the studies of privileged people are similar the universe over. History, politics, whatever the prevailing scientific theories are of said world. Language, mathematics, and so on. Though I’m guessing you didn’t have any kind of weapons training.”

“We had gym,” Strange said wryly. “Dodgeball is kind of like training for war.”

Loki arched an eyebrow. “Dodgeball?”

Winding his arm back to mime throwing something, Strange said, “It’s a game, nominally. More like a battlefield, though. You split into two teams and then throw balls at each other. If you get hit with a ball, you’re out. It could be pretty terrifying.”

This ridiculous man was actually comparing a stupid Earth game to fighting in battle. To _war._ Getting hit with a ball to being run through with a sword. Two teams selected by a teacher to opposing armies.

“Were you good at it?” Loki asked.

Strange shrugged. “I had good aim, but I wasn’t fast. Didn’t have much of an arm, either.”

“I thought the point was simply to _hit_ the opposing players. Surely it didn’t matter how hard you hit them?”

“Oh no, that’s part of it. You had to throw as hard as possible. I’d come home with bruises on dodgeball day. Molly Bruno got sent to the nurse’s office with a broken nose once.”

Loki glanced at him, wondering if this was a lie, or somehow a joke at his expense. But Strange looked serious. Against his will, the words, “I suppose the general experience is something we have in common,” came out of his mouth. To Strange’s credit, he looked as surprised to hear them as Loki felt saying them. The damage done, he added, “I was a favorite target in the training yard. I _was_ fast, though.”

“You didn’t scare the other kids with magic?” Strange said. When Loki raised an eyebrow, he said with a crooked smile, “I would’ve.”

For one insane second, Loki considered telling him that for his whole life, his magic had been scorned and belittled. That it had been the most obvious sign that he wasn’t quite a full Asgardian, long before he or anyone else had known how true that was. That epithets had been hurled at him regarding his sexual orientation and the shape of his genitalia before he’d given much thought to either. As it turned out, on both of those counts, his childhood tormenters had been at least partially right, though not really in the way they’d thought about the latter.

Except these were the sorts of things he didn’t tell his friends (not that he had any). They were the sorts of things he hadn’t told his family (Thor had seen it happening sometimes and stopped it, but that hadn’t stopped him in turn from scoffing at Loki’s magic himself). They were certainly not the sorts of things that he was going to tell Strange.

So he shrugged. “You asked me to tell you one thing,” Loki said. “I have.”

There was still a crooked smile on Strange’s face. “Of course. You _would_ be a stickler, wouldn’t you?”

“I believe I volunteered _more_ than one fact about myself,” Loki said. He tried to sound stiff and distant, but he had a nasty feeling that he was coming across far more bantering. _This isn’t the Strange you cared for_ , he reminded himself. _This isn’t the same man._ He clung to this knowledge. His life may have foundered on rocks more times than he could count, but at least he could hang on to one of the rocks while the storm raged around him.

There was a silence between them. They walked through Washington Square Park, The Arch intact here, unlike the one in the other universe.

Finally, Strange said, “You stopped visiting Jane Foster.”

Hm, maybe he should have stayed on the subject of his childhood. He opted to combat this pointed question with sarcasm. “Did I?” he asked, his tone dripping with it. “I hadn’t realized. Thank you _ever_ so much, Strange.”

Strange rolled his eyes, though he didn’t look surprised to have gotten this response. “Want to talk about it?” he asked, his tone just as sarcastic.

“You don’t actually want me to answer that, do you?” Loki asked, arching an eyebrow.

A squirrel ran across the path in front of them and Loki stopped, watching it. Strange stopped too, looking confused, before he spotted what Loki was looking at. His brow furrowed and he said, “So…what’s happening here?” As usual, his tone was sardonic, but he sounded like he really didn’t know why Loki had stopped. “We don’t eat squirrels in New York. And—Christ, you weren’t the kind of kid who killed bugs with a magnifying glass, were you?”

Loki’s jaw clenched in irritation, but then he let out a slow breath. “We don’t have squirrels in Asgard,” he said, then corrected himself, “ _Didn’t_ have them in Asgard.” Sadness swelled in him, inchoate, indistinct, with no outlet. “This planet has so much and you don’t even _care._ ”

Blinking at him, Strange asked, “Do you?”

The sadness receded back to where he kept it locked up. He looked down his nose at Strange, something that was made easier by the fact that Strange was actually shorter than him. This wasn’t a requirement; Loki had always been excellent at looking down his nose at Thor, who was taller. “Of course not,” he said. The squirrel ran up a tree, its claws scritching on the bark. And he didn’t care about Jane, either. He most certainly didn’t care what this man thought about the fact that he’d stopped visiting her.

“I’m quite sure she doesn’t want me to visit her anymore,” Loki said. Why? Why had he said it? For someone who prided himself on being utterly and completely in control of his impulses and emotions (this was a story he told himself, because he most certainly wasn’t), he seemed curiously unable to keep himself in check of late. “I don’t play well with others, Strange. You should have learned that about me by now.”

Meaning: _when people get too close to me, I know it’s only a matter of time until they realize the mistake they’ve made. If I push them away first, at least the inevitable loss is under my control._

This, at least, he managed to not say out loud.

Strange watched him. Then, he waved a hand and said, a slight smile on his face, “You? Come on. Are you trying to tell me you’re not a people person?”

This was both the last response he’d expected, and somehow, simultaneously, _exactly_ what he’d expected. Strange was an arse.

Still.

Still, there was no judgement in his tone, no admonishment, no insistence that Jane was _dying_ and he’d seemed happier while he was visiting her and didn’t he owe it not just to her, but also to Thor?

Loki flicked his eyes towards the other man, then jammed his hands in his pockets. “Shut up, Strange,” he said without malice.

With a chuckle, Strange said, “Yeah, I’ve never been able to do _that_ in my life.”

“What a surprise.”

His smile grew more crooked and they looked at each other. Loki’s mind was telling him to run and stay at the same time, screaming at him to just _go_ while at the same time asking _where?_ It was a physical sensation, almost, his nerves prickling in his hands and feet, his sternum feeling like it was being tugged apart.

Finally, Strange pointed over his shoulder with a thumb and asked, “Hey, I know we don’t really like each other and you’re a god and vastly superior to me, et cetera, et cetera, but there’s this great little tiki bar a few blocks over. Want to get a drink?”

Taken completely off guard, Loki stammered, “Er, what?”

“What’s the confusing part, what a tiki bar is or the invitation?”

“Both,” Loki answered honestly. Stripped of sarcasm and the bite of humor, his twin shields and weapons, he hardly recognized his own voice. There were very few people in his life that had ever heard him drop his shield completely, even if was only for a second. The fact that Strange was now one of them was…strange. Pun entirely intended. Also, possibly intolerable, but he’d wait on that decision. First, he’d see how this played out.

Strange flashed a grin at him. “Well, if you accept the invitation, you’ll find out what a tiki bar is. I’m thinking…Painkiller. Maybe mai tai.”

Blinking, Loki asked, “And the invitation? We don’t…we don’t _like_ each other, Strange.”

“I know.”

“So?”

Running a shaking hand through his hair, Strange said, “Entertainment?” At this, Loki’s face slammed shut again and a growl started in his throat. He would _not_ be condescended to or made a fool of by this man, not again. But Strange held up a hand. “I don’t mean it that way.”

Sneering, Loki asked, “Then what _do_ you mean?”

Strange waved a hand vaguely. “I mean, this is kind of fun. Don’t you think? The antagonism, the verbal sparring? And the fact that sometimes you actually tell me something about growing up on an alien planet?”

Utterly and completely wrong-footed, Loki stared at him, his brow furrowed. Did Strange mean this? Did he actually _enjoy_ this? “There’s something wrong with you,” he finally said.

With a snort, Strange said, “Yeah, probably.”

Loki’s fingers were fidgeting, twisting around each other, and with effort, he forced them to be still. “I don’t have any money,” he finally said.

A smile twitched at Strange’s mouth. “My treat.”

The urge to run was still there, even if there was nowhere to run to. But Loki stayed. “I don’t understand you,” he said, his eyebrows drawn together. The anger that had risen in him, ready to strike, had receded back into bewilderment.

“Well.” Strange shrugged. “The feeling’s mutual.”

Obviously. The only person who had ever come close to understanding him was his mother. And Thor, who had tried, even if he mostly hadn’t succeeded. Occasionally he’d succeeded too well, though, as on Sakaar, when he’d figured out Loki exactly, guessed precisely what he would do, and beat him at his own game. More than that, though, he’d said what Loki had always longed to hear: _you meant the world to me._

Except it had been past tense. Gone. Lost. Loki had thrown away something he’d never known he had. So he’d fought for it. And as always, Thor had fought for him in return. Those precious weeks on _The Statesman_ were something they’d never get back. Even when Loki eventually saw Thor again, it was all changed, all different. He knew what they’d had and what they’d been building was gone. But Thor had never stopped fighting for Loki, and he was finally going to repay the favor.

As soon as Strange told him he could, of course. Or until he decided he was tired of waiting around for Strange to tell him he could. For now, the urge to run had subsided. Against his better judgement, he was…intrigued by what was happening here. Even though he still suspected Strange was mocking him somehow. It was impossible to tell, because he almost always had that sardonic little smile on his face and a wry gleam in his eyes. He was completely insufferable.

“Alright,” he said slowly. “But only because I need alcohol if I’m in your company for any length of time.” When Strange rolled his eyes and chuckled, Loki added airily, “And because I’m curious about what a ‘tiki bar’ is. You’ll have to share with me what makes this one superior.” He wasn’t sure his tone had made up for the fact that he’d shown interest. Embarrassing. Why was he doing this? Boredom? Masochism? Madness?

There was another question he needed to ask himself.

Never mind Strange enjoying this. Did _he_ enjoy it?


	10. Chapter 10

_As a rule, Loki doesn’t intrude on others’ emotions. Whether they’re happy, sad, fearful—he stands back and averts his eyes, both because he’s never known how fully to share in what others are feeling and because he always feels that it isn’t his place. If he can’t process his own emotions, how can he possibly hope to process others’?_

_Which is why, when he hears a quiet sob coming from the Rotunda of Gateways one day, he turns straight around to walk the other way._

_But then he stops. Closes his eyes. Breathes deeply in and out. And then, against all his better judgement, he enters the Rotunda._

_The doorways cycle silently through different locations on Earth. Sometimes Loki comes here just to watch, wondering where the other version of himself who was so damned wonderful had visited. Which places he’d grudgingly, secretly loved, even though it was just Earth. Today, Stephen is there, sitting on one of the chairs in the center of the room. He’s slumped over, defeated, one hand covering his eyes as his shoulders shudder._

_Loki almost turns and walks away again, but then he clears his throat and asks, “Are you alright?”_

_Stephen bolts upright like he’s been shot, swiping his hand across his eyes and nose. It does nothing to hide the fact that he’s been crying. Tears still streak his face and his eyes are red. “Sure,” he says, his voice thick. “Never better.”_

_Cautiously, Loki comes further into the room, then sits slowly in the chair next to Stephen. They probably sat there together. Stephen and him. Stephen and another version of him. Gods, this is ridiculous._

_But Stephen’s pain isn’t. It’s raw and real and Loki doesn’t know what to do with it. It would be nice if it would go away. Would it be nice if_ Loki _could make it go away? The way his heartbeat quickens when he meets Stephen’s eyes tells him yes. The way he relishes every accidental brush of their fingers. The way he thinks, maybe if this wasn’t the last thing he wanted, that he would want it. Except he doesn’t know how to_ be _with someone. He hasn’t wanted to for a long time. He doesn’t want to now, except he does, and he hates it and is thrilled by it all at once._

_Awkwardly, Loki shifts on the chair. “Is it…” he begins, then stops, because whatever he says will be inadequate. It’s the strangest, most jarring thing, to see such desolation on another person’s face and to know that he’s the reason for it. Not because he did something wrong, but because he did something right. And that’s funny, because Loki doesn’t feel like he’s done very much right at all in the past decade. Returning to Asgard was it._ The Statesman. _Everything else has been wrong, every step of the way. It makes him angry that the worst version of him was the one who ended up doing everything right._

_Clearing his throat, he finally continues, “Is it him? You miss him?”_

_Stephen puts his hand over his eyes again and laughs. It’s one of the saddest things Loki’s ever heard. “Yeah,” he says. “I miss him.” He looks at Loki, and his eyes slide away, as they always do. It makes Loki’s chest hurt. He always does this to himself. Shaking his head and letting out that same sad laugh, Stephen adds, “It must be weird for you. I’m sorry.”_

_“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Loki says._

_At this, Stephen really, truly meets Loki’s eyes. “Are you kidding me? I have everything to apologize for. I know we saved your life, but I’m not sure that makes up for the rest of this shit.” He runs his fingers through his hair. They’re shaking badly. “I would’ve gone with him. I would’ve…” His hand closes into a fist and he presses his knuckles to his forehead. “Not that that was ever an option.” Bitterly, he adds, “One of the hazards of the job. I protect Earth. The chance to be human, if it happens, is just a bonus.”_

_The feelings that Loki has for this man are farcical. There’s never been any possibility of anything between them. It would be a betrayal of the highest order, Loki can see that. Replacing one Loki with another, as if the multiverse simply supplies interchangeable cogs. The irony, of course, is that the universe needed a Loki to die, and it didn’t care which one. But the universe is unfeeling. Strange is all too human. They all are._

_He’ll never understand how this other version of himself made Strange love him. Because he knows he would never be able to accomplish the same thing. And he’s annoyed, infuriated, with himself for having these stupid feelings in the first place. Stephen hasn’t done anything special. Nothing about this is special. It’s the last gasps of a dying universe, so of course Loki is seen as an equal. His magic is powerful. It’s helpful. He’s saved both Stephen’s and Wong’s lives on more than one occasion. If none of this were true, then the two of them would be enemies. There wouldn’t be any friendship between them, let alone anything else._

_He tells himself this, but he doesn’t really believe it._

_And he still desperately wants to reach out and touch Stephen’s shoulder, and have his touch be welcomed as comfort. It wouldn’t be. Strange would pull away._

_Stephen’s eyes are still red, but he doesn’t look like he’s about to start crying again. It’s none of Loki’s business, what was between them. And yet he can’t help wanting to know, like some bizarre, narcissistic form of voyeurism._

_Perhaps the right way to respond to Strange is to blandly comfort him for his loss. But for a liar, he’s curiously unwilling to be false about this. So instead, he says, “You could always stop. Give this up. Go live your life. Ultimus will probably kill us all eventually, so you might as well have some fun before he does.”_

_Strange regards him. “I let the love of—” He stops, takes a breath. “I let a good man sacrifice everything to save you and_ your _universe. I’m damn well not going to just walk away.”_

_“A good man,” Loki says sourly, but doesn’t know where else to go with it. No one has ever called_ him _a good man. “I think at this point it should be quite clear to you that_ that _was a mistake. I’m no help to you. Just like I was no help to the Asgardians that survived my sister. Just like I was no help to my brother.” His voice hitches at this. Thor, who thinks he’s dead. Thor, who’s given up. Loki can read between the lines of what he’s been told. Thor has given up on everything._

_The worst part is, Strange doesn’t disagree. He sounds tired as he says,“I just assumed you’d be able to make it work. He could. He could make it do just about whatever he wanted.”_

_“Yes, well, I’m not_ him _, am I?” Loki snaps. “I don’t know anything_ about _the Tesseract, I took it off Asgard without thinking—” why why_ why _had he taken it he would never forgive himself, “—and I threw it away for my brother. I certainly don’t know how to use it to travel through space, let alone time, and I don’t have some sort of mystical connection to it! If I could do it again, I’d leave the bloody thing there to explode along with the rest of Asgard. Then Thanos would have found it floating around in space and I wouldn’t be_ here _and at least some of our people would still be alive, I wouldn’t have abandoned Thor and I would be there for him now—”_

_Something happens._

_There’s a pulse of blue acceptance in his mind, something that’s not a consciousness, not another life, but somehow a sentience nonetheless. Utterly alien. Utterly unknowable. And Loki knows that the Tesseract, at long last, will do what he asks it to._

* * *

The hospital was quiet. Tuesdays. People were at work, not visiting their sick loved ones. The woman at the check-in desk smiled at him and said, “Haven’t seen you for awhile.”

“I was…away,” he said evasively. She’d never spoken to him before. The fact that he’d become a familiar enough face to warrant this kind of interaction made him uneasy. Almost uneasy enough, in fact, to turn around, but then he set his shoulders. Was he a coward? Well, the jury may still have been out on that one. He was determined to see Jane today, though.

She had a small computer in her lap when he stepped into her room. When she saw him, her eyes widened and she folded it up. “I figured you weren’t coming back,” she said.

“I rather thought you wouldn’t want to see me again,” he replied.

With a small smile, she said, “That’s because you’re insecure.”

He snorted. “You _do_ get right to the heart of things, don’t you, Miss Foster? My brother must have appreciated that quality about you.”

That got him another small smile. Having not seen her for a week, he could tell how much her condition had deteriorated. It was like a skull was smiling at him. “I wouldn’t mind an apology,” she said.

Loki tilted his head. “I don’t apologize. It’s not my brand.”

She rolled her eyes. “I thought you were better than everyone here. Wouldn’t that include our silly slang?”

The fact that she hadn’t told him to leave encouraged him. Taking another step into the room, he said, “I must be slipping. Too much time on this planet.” He hesitated. He didn’t apologize. “I find myself doing many things that I would have once considered beneath me.”

She waited expectantly and he sighed. She _did_ get right to the heart of things, Jane Foster did. But he wouldn’t budge on this. Words were meaningless. _I’m sorry_ meant nothing unless it was backed up with sincerity and actions, and Loki didn’t trust himself to back up his apologies with sincerity for more than a few minutes.

He’d been thinking, though, about fighting for Thor. That meant, he’d finally decided, that he should be fighting for Jane too, during what little time she had left. So he’d made a decision. If he was lucky, only Strange would find out. If he was unlucky, all of Kamar-Taj would descend on him, and he’d have to spend a tedious few days, possibly weeks, picking apart the magical prison they’d most likely put him in.

“Miss Foster,” Loki said. “If you could go anywhere in the universe right now, where would it be?”

Her brow furrowed, hairless eyebrows drawing together. “What?”

“If you could go anywhere in the universe—”

“I heard you the first time,” she interrupted him. “Why are you asking me that? Did you come back here just to be a jerk?”

Loki shook his head. “I came here to…” Too sincere. Too close to an apology. “I’d like to _not_ be a…jerk. If you’ll give me that opportunity.”

She stared at him. Perhaps she wouldn’t forgive him. He told himself he didn’t care, but it was a weak lie. In this moment, his need for her forgiveness was nearly as acute as his need for Thor’s was. Maybe that was the problem. She was a stand-in for Thor. If he couldn’t have his brother, he could have his brother’s ex-girlfriend. That was pathetic. And it wasn’t fair to her. Jane Foster deserved to be more than The Mighty Thor’s ex-girlfriend. She _was_ more than that.

There was only one thing to do, then. He looked at the ceiling and said, “I missed our conversations.” He hesitated, but was there any more to say than that? Why muck up this not-exactly-an-apology with more words?

Jane remained silent. Loki forced himself not to turn away, though it was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done.

Then, finally, she said, “Asgard.”

Raising an eyebrow, Loki replied, “Likewise. And it’s possible, Miss Foster. Presuming, of course, that you meant the Asgard that’s no more, and not the expanding disc of debris in space where Asgard used to be. But I have some…experience…with divergent timelines. Pick somewhere else.”

There was a small smile on her face. “Fine. New Asgard.” When Loki hesitated, she said, “You said anywhere.”

“I did.” What had he been expecting her to say? The Poconos? With a sigh, he said, “I’m afraid I can’t bring you into the village itself. I’m not technically allowed to leave downtown Manhattan.”

A question flickered across her face, but she didn’t speak. Nor did she look alarmed when the Tesseract appeared in his hand. Mortals. A constant surprise, truly. Or perhaps he was just lucky enough to know some particularly special ones.

He moved to the side of her bed and held out a hand. “Can you stand?” She gave him a look as if to say _don’t even ask me that shit_ before swinging her legs out of bed. Her legs, exposed under the hem of her hospital gown, were stick thin, the veins standing out as blue as Loki’s Jotun skin, were he to wear it, of course. She pulled on the pair of yoga pants that now hung off her even more loosely, even though she cinched the drawstring as tightly as it would go, then peeled off the electrodes stuck to her arm and the needles in her veins. The machines around her bed started whining.

She grabbed a sweatshirt and a hat and took his hand. The casualness of her touch made him want to jerk away. It was too intimate. They weren’t friends.

Except they were, weren’t they?

“Let’s go,” she said.

With a slight, crooked smile, the kind of smile that made people not trust him but desperately want to, he pictured the cliffs above New Asgard in his mind. The Tesseract pulsed a brighter blue, light swirling inside it, and a cloud of black closed in around them.

When it cleared, Loki found himself looking out at a sea that he’d laid eyes on only once before. There was earth under his feet and soft green grass. Wind that smelled wild, like salt and green and ancient rock, whipped his hair across his face. Jane’s hand was still in his, her grip warmer and stronger than it had any right to be.

A gull, startled by their appearance, took off from cliff top, beating its wings once and falling before it caught an updraft and soared away, screaming at them in pique. Loki watched it go and turned to look at Jane. She was smiling as she looked out at the ocean. As she turned to look behind her, she dropped his hand to spin in a complete circle. The wind gusted again, blowing the hem of her hospital gown and raising goose pimples on her arms. Before he could mention it, she pulled her sweatshirt over her head and settled her hat in place.

Still not enough. It was cold up here with the wind gusting off the sea, warning of winter. It was easy to forget in Manhattan, but out here, winter still had teeth. He shrugged off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. Of course, it made her look tiny. Even if he wasn’t practically a foot taller than her, he doubted she weighed more than ninety pounds in her current state.

For a moment, he hated her for the fact that she was going to die.

Then, he shook it off and offered her his arm. She took it and the two of them walked along the cliff. She deliberately stayed to the outside. He didn’t try to move her to safety.

There was a comfortable silence for several minutes. What a strange, strange hand life had dealt him. Forming a friendship with his brother’s terminally ill, human ex-girlfriend would not, had you asked him, have been in the cards.

The expression made him nearly stop in his tracks. Suddenly, it seemed obvious exactly what had happened here. Damn that wizard. It wasn’t just parlor tricks that he was adept at, clearly. He’d done some emotional sleight of hand, too. _Look this way, Loki—look at your brother’s ex-girlfriend and stop looking for your brother._ Jane had been a distraction. And it had worked.

It had worked a little too well. He’d found a friend.

But then, perhaps Strange had meant that, too. Loki cursed him again, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to really be angry. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe he was simply tired of being angry.

Glancing down at her, he said idly, “Can I ask you something?”

She laughed. Even though it was weak, he didn’t think of her as frail anymore. Which was stupid. She was mortal, thus, she was frail. And she was even frailer than normal, with her disease chewing through her insides. “If I said no, would it actually stop you?”

He put a hand over his heart. “Why, Miss Foster. Of course it would.” He paused. “And then I’d see how you’re feeling in fifteen minutes and ask again.”

This drew another laugh from her. “You know, if I didn’t know who you are, and what you’ve done, I’d say you’re a really charming guy, Loki of Asgard.”

His hand still over his heart, he grinned crookedly and replied, “I _am_ a very charming guy. That’s why you’re here, _despite_ knowing who I am and what I’ve done.” His smile faded. “But I don’t think you can call me Loki of Asgard anymore. Not when I’m…well, not, and Asgard’s gone.”

Mentally, he dared her to argue with him that just because it was gone, and just because he’d been kept from New Asgard, that didn’t mean he’d ever stop being Loki of Asgard. She didn’t. Instead, she asked, “Then what do you want to be called?”

But he just shook his head, unwilling to answer that. “You never said whether I can ask my question or not.”

Waving a hand, she said, “Oh, fine. Ask your extremely personal question.”

He smiled a little, his eyes on a dip ahead in the ground that he’d need to steer her around. “Why _did_ you end things with my brother? I’ve spent my whole life watching women fall over themselves to get his attention, and it’s a hundred times worse on Earth. But _you_ ended the relationship. Why?”

He could practically hear Thor in his head insisting that it was a mutual dumping. Whatever bad blood had been between them in the hours after Thor had ousted Loki from the throne, obviously Loki had pretended to believe that.

She stopped walking and let out a long, whooshing breath. “Oh.” She closed her eyes and wobbled on her feet. It was no problem keeping her upright. “You’re going to think I’m terrible.”

With a snort, he said, “Remember who you’re talking to.”

“That’s the problem,” she said. When he cocked his head at her, she sighed and looked towards the sea. There was a long silence before she finally said, “He was grieving. And it was too much for me.”

This, it was fair to say, had been the last thing Loki had expected to hear. “Grieving?” he asked, confused.

She looked at him. “Yeah,” she said. “Grieving. You died.” When Loki just furrowed his brow, unable to process this, she sighed. “I never saw him. He was always running off somewhere. There was always someone to save. And I finally realized it was because he couldn’t save you, so he was going to save everyone else.”

Loki didn’t know what to say. This was…not what he’d thought had been behind the breakup. What _had_ he thought? That they just weren’t suited for each other? Jane was a brilliant scientist, and Thor was…not. Oh, Thor wasn’t an idiot, despite Loki’s insistence to the contrary, but he was almost never the smartest person in the room. Even if Jane had been swept off her feet by the good looks and the muscles and the fact that he was a god, eventually, she would have gotten bored. At least, he’d assumed so.

Grief? _Grief?_

Still watching him, Jane said, “It wasn’t so bad at first. There was Sokovia and the Avengers. But after that…”

“I bear some of the responsibility for him not being here,” Loki finally said. Guilt squirmed in his stomach. He would have liked to pretend that he didn’t recognize it for what it was, but he was _well_ acquainted with guilt. “It was…better for me if he wasn’t on Asgard.”

“Did he ever argue with you?” she asked pointedly. “I mean, I know you were posing as Odin and you’re not supposed to argue with the Allfather, but I always got the impression Thor argued a lot with your dad.”

Loki looked at her, his silence serving as an answer. No. No, Thor had never argued with him. Thor had never asked to be sent to Midgard. When Loki had come up with some ridiculously far-flung planet to send him to, Thor had never fought to be closer to her. And eventually, Thor had stopped returning to Asgard at all.

Loki had told himself that he didn’t miss him, either.

With another sigh, she said, “Long distance relationships are hard. But they’re even harder when your boyfriend is on the other side of the galaxy mourning for his brother and there’s nothing you can do to help. I couldn’t take away his grief. I could barely even understand it. All I did was make him feel like he had to come back to Earth to visit me, and I just…I started to think, maybe we were never meant to be together. Maybe we were only brought together because the universe was trying to protect itself.”

“During the Convergence, you mean,” Loki said.

Nodding, Jane said, “And the more I thought about it…” She stopped, then shook her head. “I wasn’t what he needed. I felt like a weight. And he had enough of that.”

He still had no idea what to say. The idea that Thor had grieved him so deeply was simply…incredible. As in, it strained credulity. “Perhaps you mistook some other emotion for grief,” Loki finally said.

“No.” Jane’s voice was quiet and firm. “I’ll never forget the way he looked on Svartalfheim when he was holding your body.”

There was that twist in his stomach again. Guilt. Regret. Sorrow. In the aftermath of the Convergence, Loki’s relationship with Thor was better than it had been in years. But of course, Thor thought it was a relationship with his father.

Well, hopefully Thor thought his relationship with Odin had improved. Loki had tried to be the Odin that he’d always wanted as a father.

Still. It wasn’t what he’d _wanted_. He’d thought he had. Like most things that he thought he’d wanted, he got it and found out he was wrong.

“Did he talk about me?” Loki asked, feeling something wild and wounded trying to claw its way out of his throat. Why did he doubt his brother’s pain? He knew the state Thor was in currently. But he’d thought…surely it was everything else. Loki had died before, but the third time was the charm. It seemed like Thor should have gotten used to it and just…moved on. Not grieved.

Gods. Sometimes he wished he could stab himself. Not to do any permanent damage, but just to make himself shut up once in awhile. He supposed he had, in a way. The other universe’s Loki had stabbed him, after all. Stabbed him and made him a liar once again regarding his demise.

_Of course Thor grieved you. Why do you have to be this way?_

Good question.

Loki shook himself. His internal monologue was becoming disruptive. And Jane hadn’t answered his question.

When he looked at her, she said, “He never talked about you.”

This hurt, even though it was no more than he’d expected. “Then how, pray tell, do you know he was grieving?”

“Because I loved him,” Jane said. Loki recoiled from the sadness in her voice. “Because I know what it looks like when you can’t deal with someone being gone. No offense, but it kind of seems like neither of you are very well-adjusted emotionally.”

Loki snorted. “Tell me more.”

She gave him a sad smile. “Did you think he didn’t care that you were gone? Is that why you haven’t come here to see him yet?”

Raising an eyebrow, he said, “I don’t think I ever told you I haven’t come here.” Nor had he told her he hadn’t seen Thor. Was he that transparent? Gods. He _hated_ that.

Her mouth twitched, a dry look in her eyes. It didn’t push the sadness out, but seemed to sit there comfortably beside it. It was an expression he was intimately familiar with, since he’d seen it enough on his own face. “It’s pretty obvious. Something’s keeping you away. Is it Strange?”

He clenched a fist. In the past few weeks, he hadn’t told Jane much about his situation, but he’d let slip—quite purposefully, in a calculated way—that he had taken up unwilling residence in the Sanctum with Doctor Strange. “Yes.” _No._ With a sigh, he said, “It’s more what Strange has said to me. A warning, I suppose. About how much more damage I can do.”

There was a silence. She looked a bit troubled. “Damage? To Thor?”

Loki shrugged, unwilling to admit out loud that not causing damage to Thor was one of the only things he cared about currently. More damage, as the case may have been. Thor, from everything he’d been told, was damaged enough. “To the universe at large, as I understand it. Though I’ve never been all that concerned about the universe at large.” This was the only way he could give voice to the fact that he would do what was in his power to not hurt his brother—and that alone had stopped him from coming here.

New Asgard. The village came into view and Loki stopped walking. It looked like…nothing. Less than nothing. There was something that may have been a feasting hall, houses—more like cabins—built of wood. A small harbor with a stone breakwater. Boats bobbing in the waves. Loki could imagine the rest, though he was too far away to see it. Coils of ropes marking the places where more boats would tie up later, lobster pots piled against the wall, in need of repair or simply not in use this late in the season. Nets drying in the weak sunlight. Buckets and Wellington boots. The stink of fish everywhere. He could practically smell it up here.

That wasn’t true. The wind wasn’t blowing the right way. But he still knew it was a fact.

His hatred for it hit him even harder than he’d expected it to, like a hammer blow to his sternum that crushed it inward and pierced his heart with shards of bone. This was Asgard. This was what their people had been reduced to.

No wonder Thor had left.

He clenched his teeth and let out a hiss of air, his whole body tensing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jane glance at him. “I’m guessing you don’t want to go down there to check it out,” she said.

“I can’t,” he said, his voice tight. Even if he could, he wouldn’t want to.

Instead, he turned away, watching gulls turn and wheel over the cliffs. It reminded him of Asgard. His heart clenched tighter. Gone. All of it was gone. If he could, he would use the Tesseract to go back and stop all of it from happening. His stupid prank. Going to Jotunheim. Discovering the truth about himself and losing everything. His family. His identity. Himself. He’d set into motion a chain of events that he couldn’t disentangle from the way things were now: Asgard destroyed, his people decimated, his parents dead, his brother lost.

He _could_ use the Tesseract. It would be easy. But he’d only make things worse. He understood that. If there was _one_ thing he understood, it was that he couldn’t possibly predict the threads that would spin out from him tampering with the timeline. He couldn’t even predict the results of his own actions. Not that it ever stopped him from doing anything. But this, just this one thing, he balked at.

Perhaps he’d fix everything. But he was far more likely to cause something that he couldn’t possibly foresee. Right now Thor was simply lost. Drifting. In the other universe, Thor had been dead. And that Loki hadn’t been able to live with that. He’d given up everything because he couldn’t live with it. The man he loved. His life. His universe.

He saw no reason why he would be any different.

Jane was still facing towards New Asgard. “Loki,” she said. He didn’t look at her, until, with a sigh, he turned back to face her. She was staring at New Asgard, but slowly, she turned to look at him. “Why are you so sad and angry all the time?”

He chuckled mirthlessly. “Miss Foster, that’s a long story, and I’m sure you don’t want to waste what little time remains to you by listening to it.”

She made a noise. Not quite a scoff, but about halfway there. “You can just say you don’t want to answer. You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

Arching an eyebrow, he asked, “Who says that was sarcasm? I mean it. You don’t want to listen to a thousand years of what amounts, I suppose, to family drama.”

She raised her eyebrows right back. “Have you ever considered therapy?” When he furrowed his brow, she said, “Why am I not surprised that Asgardians don’t have therapy?”

“Is therapy another way for mortals to coddle themselves?” He smiled when she shook her head at him in amused exasperation. The smile fell off his face, though, as he looked out at the sea. It was true, his sadness and anger went back years, centuries, and it was too much to tell her, even if he’d wanted to unburden himself. His family’s issues were his family’s issues, and he preferred not to air them to anyone else. It was nigh unto impossible even to talk about them with his family. Well, for obvious reasons, these days, but even when they’d all been alive.

But the source of his hurt now was more immediate, more visceral. The wounds hadn’t even begun to heal, and giving voice to them wasn’t going to help that process.

Still. There was something about her that made him want to…well, not be honest, exactly. Not totally honest. But she had given him something that few people were willing to, which was a chance to speak. To tell his own story in _his_ words. To not let it be told to her by others. So perhaps he could give her a piece of that story.

With a slow exhale, he said, “I spent three months in another universe. I had to clean up a mess that I made—a different version of me, but me, all the same. In a way. And then I had to destroy that universe to save our own.” He stopped and curled his fingers into his palms, his fingernails pressing into his skin. “At least, so I was told. Things _were_ bad there. I was assured that the problems that universe faced would become _this_ universe’s. And that other version of me…he sacrificed his life to save mine. Thor’s, I think, more than mine. He came here. To New Asgard. He spoke with Thor.” With a bitter laugh, he said, “Which means he had more contact with my brother in the past five years than I’ve had.”

Jane pressed her lips together. “That’s…a lot.” A wrinkle appeared in her forehead. Her skull seemed too visible, which made his stomach twist in something that felt like squeamishness. “‘So you were told.’ Who told you?”

Loki’s gaze grew distant and he felt a deep furrow in his own brow as an expression of helplessness settled on his face. “Strange,” he said. He kept staring out to sea and somehow, words were coming out of his mouth, words that he hadn’t planned on saying. “For most of my life, practically everyone has expected something from me, both good and bad. I never seemed to be able to live up to the good, and the bad…well, I far exceeded everyone’s expectations there. But he gave me a chance. He was kind to me when he didn’t have to be, when it would have been so much easier for him not to be.”

Finally, control reasserted himself and he clamped his mouth shut. Why had he said any of that? He wanted to _forget_. Talking about it only gave it life.

He’d told Strange, in the other universe, that he wouldn’t ever forget. But he’d been lying. Or maybe he hadn’t. He no longer knew. Forgetting seemed easier. If he could forget, then it wouldn’t hurt anymore. But if he forgot, then there would be no one to remember or appreciate the sacrifice they’d made, the terrible choice another universe had faced.

Then again, if he forgot, it meant _he_ wouldn’t have to remember his role in the demise of trillions and trillions of people. He’d spent his whole life wishing he could be worthy, wondering what he’d have to do to lift Mjølnir. Now, he knew there was nothing he could ever do. He’d done what he needed to do and he supposed the ends justified the means. Perhaps that was why _he’d_ been the one to do it. Somebody like Thor would have fought the destruction of the other universe to the bitter end. He would have been convinced there was another way. But Loki knew when to cut his losses. Loki knew that sometimes you had to blacken your soul to get the results everyone wanted. And he was willing to do that. He’d never been worthy. The Norns had seen to it that he never would be.

Jane watched him. “You were in love with him.”

Loki scoffed, ignoring the ache in his chest. “I don’t think I’d go _that_ far.”

“Oh, come on. Admit it. It’s the least you can do—I’m a dying woman, like you keep reminding me.”

He glanced down at her. “I’m not going to be bullied into sentimentality.” Looking back to the horizon, he said, “Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered. He didn’t return the feelings. He was in love with someone else.”

That made him laugh. How could you not? The situation, were it not so heartbreaking, was absolutely absurd. “He was in love with me, actually, but a different version of me. Just an interdimensional love triangle involving two versions of the same person. You know, your typical love story.” He snorted, then added more quietly, “I wasn’t in love with him. I know better than to do that to myself.” A terrible lie, on both counts. He’d never been able to not put himself into situations that would only end in pain.

“Love isn’t weakness,” Jane said.

With a sniff, he said, “Of course it is.” It was his love for his family that had prevented him from simply being the monster that he was supposed to be. It was love that kept him torn in half, ripped to shreds, constantly grasping at something that he didn’t want to want. Love had made him destroy an entire universe and weep while he was doing it, because there, his brother was dead, and he couldn’t live in a timeline where he was alone. If that wasn’t weakness, then what was?

“I told my brother the sun would shine on us again,” he said. “And instead, I failed him. Which, honestly, I’ve been doing my whole life, so we should both be used to it by now. But I’m still not. So everything I’ve done for the past however long it’s been since I died and then didn’t die, it’s been to keep that promise. I’ve spent most of my life being sad and angry, but of late, _that’s_ the reason. Not because I had my heart broken or some nonsense like that.”

For one thing, you couldn’t break a heart that was already shattered. “I made a promise that I meant to keep. Instead, he’s forgotten who he is and I’m trapped in a wizard’s house in the West Village, hearing the same thing I’ve always known to be true: Thor doesn’t need me and being in his life is to the detriment of everyone and everything. Strange looked into the future and saw that. But to be perfectly honest, there’s no need for an Infinity Stone to tell me Thor’s better off without me in his life.” He took a breath, ready to go on, but what else was there to say?

Her fingers squeezed tight around his arm but she didn’t speak. At any other time, he would have despised himself for saying all of this out loud. He despised himself enough for thinking it constantly. But something about her made him…not. He couldn’t explain it.

A gust of wind came off the ocean, smelling of salt and the vastness of the sea, catching at his hair and flattening the grass around them. Beside him, Jane closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Just because you haven’t made good on a promise yet doesn’t mean it’s broken,” she said. “And you know Thor needs you. For one thing, I already told you. For another, you just said it yourself. He’s forgotten who he is.”

Loki glanced down at her. Her eyes were still closed, but then she opened them and looked up to meet his gaze. “I don’t know why you’d let someone who doesn’t know either of you get in your head so much. So Strange saw some version of the future. So what? _You_ know Thor better than anyone.”

“Better than you?” he asked, smiling slightly.

She snorted and didn’t dignify that with a response. “I think you’re telling yourself Thor doesn’t need you because you’re afraid it’s true. And you’d rather get used to the idea now instead of being blindsided later.”

His brow furrowed and he realized he was clenching and unclenching one of his hands and fidgeting with his fingers. With effort, he stilled his hand and laid it flat on his leg. It felt cool through his pants, as it always did. There was a slim possibility that she might be right. That deep down, he had an unshakeable faith that Thor needed him. There was a toxic side to that, too—an unshakeable faith that he could get away with anything and that Thor would still be there.

That was what had changed on Sakaar. Thor had told him he didn’t need him anymore and Loki had learned that no matter what he told himself, no matter what he’d survived, no matter what he’d been prepared to do or actually had done, that his brother washing his hands of him was the one thing he couldn’t live with.

It was tempting to be annoyed at Jane for pinning his insecurities so precisely on him, but he couldn’t be. Honestly, now that he was thinking about it, if she wasn’t his brother’s ex-girlfriend, he could easily have fallen for her. But she was. And there was the whole human thing. Not to mention the fact that her current lifespan was being measured in weeks. At a certain point, one had to make an emotional calculus. He’d tried to tell that to Thor, but of course, Thor hadn’t listened. When had Thor ever listened?

Then again, Loki didn’t think he’d ever really been that good at making the sensible emotional calculus. Hadn’t he fallen in love with a man who was never going to love him back? Fine, then. For his brother, who was clearly still infatuated with the woman, Loki would make sure not to have the same feelings for her.

Still, he couldn’t resist saying, “You know, I think I’m beginning to understand what my brother saw in you. No offense, of course. It’s just, we’re gods, and mortals don’t have much to offer.”

“How was that _less_ offensive?”

He laughed.

Her fingers squeezed around his arm and he patted her hand. “I’m sorry I can’t take you to Asgard,” he said. “ _Or_ New Asgard.”

She smiled. It was one of the saddest things he’d ever seen. “It’s okay. I just wanted to get a glimpse of it while I still had the chance.”

Suddenly, her eyes darkened with pain and her jaw clenched. Her fingers tightened around his arm, then slackened as her knees buckled beneath her. Loki caught her before she fell to the ground. “Jane?” he said, hearing the naked concern in his voice, knowing she’d hear it too, and for once, not caring.

Her breathing was shallow. “I’m fine.”

She wasn’t. He could tell that if he let go of her, her legs would simply fold under her and she’d collapse. “There’s no point in lying to the God of Lies,” he said, then simply picked her up and held her in his arms. She weighed nothing at all, like a piece of parchment or a feather quill that the wind could pick up and sweep away with no effort at all.

Closing her eyes, she said, “You know how you don’t want to be called Loki of Asgard?”

He drew his eyebrows together and nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him. What he needed to do was get her back to Metro-General, so as he said, “Yes,” he shifted her weight in his arms and allowed the Tesseract to appear in his hand.

There was a grimace of pain on her face now. “Whatever you end up calling yourself, don’t let it be God of Lies.”

“Alright,” he said. He would have said anything if it would wipe the agony off her face. This planet was making him soft. This planet had _made_ him soft.

Jane opened her eyes and met his. Her gaze was piercing, even though it was clouded with pain. “They told me you signed into the hospital as Loki Odinson. I think you should stick with that.”

Before he could respond, her head lolled back and she passed out. Loki took one last look at the sea, wrapped his fingers around the Tesseract, and brought them back.


	11. Chapter 11

When he arrived back at the Sanctum, Strange was in the foyer, flipping through mail. Loki stopped at the sight of him, letting the door close behind him quietly. There was no way that he wasn’t going to hear about what he’d done. He’d left New York. He’d used the Tesseract. He’d gone to New Asgard. These were all things he wasn’t supposed to be doing, though anyone expecting him to do anything else was absurd. What was the God of Mischief supposed to do, except get into mischief?

Strange glanced at him. “I’m still getting offers from Sirius-XM Radio for the car I bought in 2016,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t even know how they found me.”

Loki stared at him. Strange stared back.

“How’s Jane?” Strange finally asked.

_Dying. Like you said. I’m not sure I believed you._

“She’s been better,” Loki replied. He waited for Strange to say more, like, _Well, obviously you’ll have to be imprisoned now._ Magic was at his fingertips and his palms itched to summon his knives, but he waited.

The silence stretched. Strange tossed the mail on the table. “Have you eaten anything?”

Something in him—everything in him—shied away from this. It was a trap. It wasn’t a trap. Either was intolerable. “Yes,” he lied. Was Strange going to attack him once his back was turned? That would be the smart thing. Loki was certainly easier to take down if you hit him when he was least expecting it.

With a shrug, Strange said, “Okay.” He vanished without another word and Loki heard his footsteps on the second floor.

What was this? What was happening? Loki had broken the terms of their agreement, set out to him quite clearly the day he’d arrived here. Strange had teleported both of them from the sidewalk outside to a room in the Sanctum that Loki hadn’t seen since: small, windowless, bare. There was a door, but Loki had a feeling that if he’d opened it, it simply would have led right back into the room.

The air had crackled with magic and Strange had demanded, “What do you mean, I told you in a different universe to come here?”

Loki had looked around the room lazily. Was this the sort of place where no one could hear you scream? When he’d glanced back at Strange, he’d said, “I could use a drink.”

Strange’s gaze had hardened, but then, much to Loki’s surprise, a glass of some kind of umber liquid had appeared in his hand. Loki had taken it, bolted it down, and the glass had refilled. So he’d drunk that too. His hands were shaking, a fact which he was sure Strange had noted. The alcohol hadn’t helped. It only made him feel more like he was going to cry.

But he told Strange. He told Strange all of it. _The Statesman._ Thanos. Being saved by his own doppelgänger. Three months in an alternate universe, which he’d just come from eliminating.

“I thought that was the TVA’s job,” Strange had said, his brow furrowing.

Loki had waved a hand. “The TVA was wiped out.” He’d paused. “Have you ever heard of someone called Ultimus?”

The look on Strange’s face had made it obvious. “Kree Eternal?” he’d asked after a moment.

“That’s the one,” Loki had replied. “And I just bought us some time by destroying the universe that my past self created, but he’ll work out how to get here eventually.” Loki had paused. “We don’t want that, in case it isn’t obvious. His delusions of grandeur rival Thanos’s.”

Strange had put his trembling hands to his temples and rubbed them. “Listen to me,” he’d said. “You don’t use the Tesseract. You don’t go to New Asgard. You don’t leave New York. And you don’t go looking for Thor. Deal?”

“Excuse me?” Loki had said.

“In exchange, you can stay here.” Strange had stared at him intently. “Do we have a deal?”

“Your ‘in exchange’ sounds like another punishment.”

Orange mandalas had flared into being and rotated around Strange’s wrists. “Do. We have. A deal.”

To this day, Loki had wondered if Strange thought Loki was afraid of him. The joke was on him. Loki wasn’t afraid of anything. The worst had already happened.

Wrong. A lie. Loki was afraid of losing Thor for good, the way another version of himself had lost Thor and lost himself. There was no way Strange could have known that. And yet, he had to have been gambling it was true.

“Why would I agree to that?” Loki had finally said.

Strange had let a slow breath out through his nose. “Because I had the Time Stone,” he’d said. “And I saw over fourteen million futures.”

Message received. Loki had glared, thought about fighting his way out, and then remembered the Stephen Strange he’d just murdered. Erased. Whatever. Only one person had been hurt when that other universe had evaporated and Loki had known the pain would never go away.

“Fine,” he’d said in a low tone.

Abruptly, they were in another room. Loki’s stomach had lurched and ended up somewhere in the region of his esophagus. Strange had taken the glass from him and said, “That wasn’t so bad, right?”

It was unclear whether he meant Loki telling him everything he’d been through or the teleportation. Either way, it had been. He’d considered stabbing Strange then and there, but he’d refrained.

Had something changed between them? Had _everything_ changed between them? There was no way Strange didn’t know Loki had just left New York. There was the cursed _list_ , and anyway, the other man may have been a less talented sorcerer than Loki was, but he had _some_ talent. He knew and he’d said nothing. Why?

There were people that Loki had once had in his life who would have said, ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ but he’d never subscribed to that. People did things for reasons and they weren’t often altruistic. And if you didn’t know why people were doing the things they did, you could neither see through nor manipulate them later.

Loki leaned against the wall, his shoulder blades bracing him, and tilted his head back, his eyes closed, so the crown of his head bumped against the wood. Jane’s face, twisted in pain, flickered across the backs of his eyelids. So did Thor’s, his agony lit by the purple glow of the Power Stone in Thanos’s damn gauntlet. Sick, heavy shame and guilt roiled Loki’s guts, and…and something else. Sadness, longing, an unformed desire for something he couldn’t name.

Another lie. Of course he could name it.

He wanted to go home.

He wanted to go home, but he had no home to go to. Asgard was destroyed. New Asgard was barred to him. If Asgard wasn’t a place, but a people, that didn’t help him either. His brother was sailing around the galaxy, blissfully ignorant of the fact that Loki was stuck on Earth waiting for him, staring up into a washed-out, inky, light-polluted night sky and wondering where he was.

His eyes stung and he squeezed them shut tighter. On Sakaar, he’d decided to hold the people he cared for closer. An easy decision to make, though it had felt momentous to him. Putting it into practice was something else entirely. For years, he’d been telling himself he had no one, but now he wondered if he hadn’t just been _determined_ to have no one. To go it alone. It was what he was made for.

Maybe. But if Asgard wasn’t a place, but a people, then what he really wanted was to not be alone.

Loki pushed that thought away. There was no point in not wanting to be alone when it was what he was.

* * *

Something was wrong. Loki was familiar enough with the face people put on when they had bad news to deliver that his shoulders were already tensed and knotted by the time he got to the check-in desk at Metro-General’s cancer center. The woman that recognized him was there and she shook her head when he approached.

“I was afraid she didn’t tell you,” she said.

“Tell me what?” Loki asked, curling his fingers around the edge of the desk.

The woman gave him a look of sympathy that he couldn’t help but read as false, even though it probably wasn’t. Anyway, she didn’t know him. The expression of trite, human sentimentality on her face, an empathy that he didn’t want or need, made him bristle.

“Jane moved to hospice care,” the woman said. “She didn’t want to be here anymore.”

His spine stiffened. “And where is this hospice care?”

Shaking her head, the woman replied, “I can’t tell you if she didn’t.” She held her hands out apologetically. “HIPAA.”

Stillness surrounded Loki. Calm. A deceptive calm, the kind that was in the center of a hurricane. The kind of calm that Loki imagined Thor felt before he unleashed lightning and thunder.

There were storms inside Loki too. The difference was, his had nowhere to go except further within himself.

His hand reached out, striking-snake fast, to rest on her forehead. Frightened, she jerked back, but as soon as his fingers were there, his mind riffling through hers, he made her forget it had ever happened. All she would remember was him standing in front of her, eyes wide, shoulders heaving, hating this stupid planet and its stupid, prideful mortals with their guttering candle flame lives.

She wouldn’t have guessed that last part. Perhaps if he’d allowed her to remember what she’d felt of his mind when he’d touched hers, she would have.

When he swept out of the hospital without another word, he pulled the phone Strange had given him from his pocket and typed in the address he’d found in the woman’s head. An apartment building uptown.

Had Jane gone home to die? How dare she not tell him, how dare she just _leave_ and not say a word, she—

He stopped. Passersby cursed as they walked by him. But he stood in the middle of the sidewalk, ignoring them.

It was gray and drizzly, bordering on rain, hovering just on this side of tolerable. An umbrella smacked him in the shoulder but he didn’t move. He felt like he couldn’t.

Jane leaving the hospital, going home, dying on her terms—it had nothing to do with him. She owed him nothing. The fact that she’d shared some of her life with him was an act of generosity. He couldn’t expect her to share her death. Anyway, Loki understood wanting to die on one’s own terms. Once, he too had decided to die the way he wanted to. That had been taken from him. And he certainly couldn’t offer her another chance at life.

The wall cloud of anger inside him came up against his grief like a storm front, hot air hitting cold, and all he knew was that he needed to get away. He needed to _run_ ; he was tired of being bound by all of this. By the past, by his anger and grief and…and _himself_. If he could, he would burn it all down, but he didn’t even know what _it_ was. He didn’t know. He didn’t know.

So he hailed a taxi and when he got in, he said, “Take me somewhere where I can see all of this.”

“Like the Empire State Building?” the driver asked.

“No.” Loki sat back in the seat, his clothes damp. “Somewhere I can see it but not…be in it.”

He knew perfectly well he wasn’t making very much sense. The driver looked thoughtful though. Over the past several months, Loki had done his best to learn English. Part of it was a natural affinity for languages, hearing the actual spoken words as a sort of sub-frequency to his Allspeak, and part of it was simply that it was something to do. The taxi driver’s accent wasn’t like Jane’s or Strange’s, or the woman at the check-in desk at Metro-General, or Wong’s. It wasn’t until he’d learned the language that he’d begun to appreciate accents. They could tell you something about a person—where they were from, how long they’d been away, whether they valued the place they’d come from or wanted to wipe all traces of it away.

Turning around to face the front of the taxi, the driver said, “I think I know a place. You’re okay with Jersey?”

“Is that outside Manhattan?” Loki asked.

In the rear view mirror, he saw the driver give him a funny look. “Yeah.”

“Good,” Loki murmured, calling up in his mind the map of Strange’s protective spells that covered this city like a net and kept him inside. Using the Tesseract would have been easier and faster but suddenly, he wanted the satisfaction of knowing he could destroy something. If he couldn’t burn down everything, at least he’d burn down the symbol of everything he hated most right now.

The spells went down as the taxi crawled through the Lincoln Tunnel, Loki dismantling them enough to allow him to pass, then tearing them apart behind him because he could. He didn’t just unravel them, he took a knife to them, slashing them to ribbons and leaving the evidence of their ruin flapping in the metaphysical wind. A message scrawled across Strange’s precious _protections_ : LOKI WAS HERE.

After a long drive, the taxi pulled up in an empty parking lot. It was raining harder here at, a sign had informed him, Liberty State Park. He paid the fare with a credit card Strange had given him. Strange had explained that there was money pre-loaded onto it, which Loki hadn’t understood. “This isn’t real currency, though,” he’d said. “How can there be value already attached to it that I can spend?”

A smile had twitched at Strange’s mouth. “I put five hundred on there,” he said. “Should be enough for a few cab fares.”

It wasn’t five hundred for the trip, though Loki felt it could have been, considering the traffic. The taxi pulled away, leaving him alone in the parking lot. In front of him, he could see a grassy area and a bricked path with a rail along it. Beyond that was water. The Hudson River—the side he wasn’t supposed to be on. Loki made his way towards the brick path, stepping over puddles and avoiding worms that had crawled out of the ground. When he reached the end of the path he stopped, resting his fingers on the cold, wet railing and curling his fingers around it.

Rain pattered on the path beside him, falling gently on his hair and pocking New York Harbor as it hit the water. Loki stared into the gray distance at the Statue of Liberty looming through the curtain of drizzle, and farther away, New York City. Everything was so quiet here. That whole heaving city, stripped of everything that made it what it was. It could be anywhere, on any planet, with its titanic architecture, fingers of steel and glass scraping the clouds. If Loki squinted, lower Manhattan almost took on the shape of the palace on Asgard. But here, it was just the calls of gulls, wingbeats on the air, and the lapping of water.

His mind, always raging, quieted. He let the peace of this place in and breathed, and for one long moment, the stillness in him was real. For just that moment, he let go of everything and let himself be nothing, and he didn’t hate himself for it.

It didn’t last. Obviously. But he was able to take several deep breaths and feel his heart slow. A little less rage pumping through his veins—that was a worthy goal to strive for. Especially when he didn’t truly know what he was angry at, besides the universe. Perhaps that was enough.

Movement caught his eye, and he turned his head to see another person braving the elements, umbrella held low as they walked towards him along the waterfront path. Hopefully they’d come out here in this weather to be alone, just like he had. He wasn’t interested in a conversation.

Then, Loki stiffened, his eyes widening, then narrowing, as he realized who it was. He considered fleeing. But something kept him there, on the balls of his feet, ready to run, but still for the moment.

Strange stopped five feet in front of him and cocked his head. “You didn’t swim over here, did you?”

Loki’s lip twisted. “Oh, was that the loophole around your little spells? It didn’t matter, Strange. I broke them. Who do you think you’re dealing with, exactly?”

Strange looked at him. The umbrella wasn’t doing much to keep him dry, or maybe he hadn’t opened it quickly enough when he’d arrived, because his shoulders and hair were wet, the piece of his hair that normally flopped charmingly over his forehead plastered there instead.

Had he really just thought the word ‘charmingly’ in reference to Strange? The thought made him want to gag.

“I’ve always known exactly who I’m dealing with,” Strange said, and for once, for maybe the first time ever, Loki heard a cautious note in his voice.

Loki sneered at him anyway. “Good for you. I suppose it’s a power trip, isn’t it? Knowing where I am at all times, knowing you have me on a leash. Loki, the God of Mischief, Prince of Asgard. I ruled the Nine Realms once. Eleven years ago I was leading an army of Chitauri warriors against this city and now I’m like a beaten dog, grateful for whatever scraps you deign to toss me. This is what I’m reduced to. An iPhone _Eight_ , a Metro Card—”

_Conversations with a dying woman, a friendship you never looked for. Tiki bars and drinks with an obnoxious wizard whose wit made you laugh, didn’t it?_

He took a deep breath in through his nose. “But you know I won’t risk harming my brother. So enjoy the control, Strange. It has to end at some point. It _will_ end at some point.”

A breath of wind moved across the harbor, flattening the drizzle marks on the water and rustling the reeds. The expression on Strange’s face was indecipherable. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, hesitating before he spoke. “I know you don’t believe me, but no. That’s not what this is about. It’s never been about that.”

“Maybe I would believe you if you didn’t—” But Loki cut himself off, unsure where he’d been going with that. If he didn’t what? Look like a man who he’d never pretended to be? Their open hostility had come to an end that day Loki had drawn his knife on Strange, and since then, the wizard had clearly taken pains to be—well, not conciliatory, exactly. Accepting, perhaps, was the word. Accepting of who Loki was, and how he felt.

Had Loki been making some kind of parallel effort? He wanted to think he hadn’t. But he had a niggling feeling that he could have been even more unpleasant, but that something had held him back.

The rain fell harder. Strange shifted his hold on his umbrella, then held it out. “I actually came to give you this,” he said. Loki’s brow furrowed and Strange added, looking towards the sky in a way that seemed designed to avoid eye contact, “And to make sure you were alright.”

Loki blinked. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

Then, finally, he said, “I beg your pardon?”

Eyes the color of the gray sky and gray water flicked towards his, then away again. “I’m pretty sure you heard me the first time.”

“I…” Loki’s fingers clenched and unclenched and Strange proffered the umbrella again. Loki didn’t take it. “Why would you…” It was difficult even to say the words. “Why would _you_ …feel any concern for me? Let alone show it?”

Strange shrugged and looked out over the water. “You’ve been through a lot of shit lately. It was obviously hard.” He stopped, like he knew better than to say what was about to come out of his mouth. But he still added, “And you miss your brother.”

“I don’t miss my brother,” Loki said reflexively. Strange looked at him and he amended, “Perhaps a bit. Only because he’s an easy target.” What the hel was that supposed to mean? That he enjoyed mocking Thor, and _that_ was what he missed most about him? Idiotic.

He fumbled for something else to say, put so on his back foot by Strange’s statement that his mind felt like it was spinning on ice. “What was there to worry about? Your list tells you exactly where I am. What did you think I was going to do, fling myself in the river and drown myself?”

He still hadn’t taken the umbrella, but Strange hadn’t retracted his arm, so now they were both getting drenched. And Strange could easily have summoned a shield to keep himself dry, so why didn’t he? Some sort of perverse human logic that…well, perhaps wasn’t so different from Loki’s own perverse logic. Occasionally, there was something to be said for letting the weather match your misery.

There was a tightening around Strange’s eyes, a hesitation before he answered. “You’re not on the list anymore.”

Loki scoffed. “Oh, please. I was on it in the other universe, and _that_ version of me had been actively protecting this planet. Why wouldn’t I be on it here?”

With a meaningful look, Strange replied, “That version of you came up with a plan to destroy his own universe, and then you pulled it off. So…I mean this in a technical way, you _were_ a threat to that Earth.”

A droplet of water slid from Loki’s hairline down to his nose, and he wiped it off with the back of his hand, staring at Strange. “You took me off the list.”

“It updates itself.”

Loki didn’t ask whether or not Strange _would_ have taken him off the list. The fact that he wasn’t on it anymore had given rise to conflicting feelings: surprise, offense, relief, annoyance. A swirl of confusion, because he couldn’t decide from day to day how he viewed himself, and it rankled, it always rankled, to know that others were judging him and he was powerless to stop it. Whether it was a self-updating, magical list, the Avengers, his father, anyone—what right did they have to decide who he was when _he_ didn’t know?

Strange sighed. “Take the umbrella, Loki.”

And then, surprising himself, he did. Their fingers brushed as Loki wrapped his fingers around the handle, and it sent a bolt of heat straight to his core. He almost closed his eyes and cursed himself and the fact that his stupid eyes, his stupid body, couldn’t understand what his mind did. That the Norns were laughing at him, and the multiverse had presented him with two men, almost the same, but different enough, and he didn’t want this one.

Maybe, though—maybe he didn’t want to hate him, either.

With a tiny smile, Strange made a series of motions with his hands, and Loki suddenly found himself completely dry. Strange had done the same thing for himself, and an orange shield was now rotating over his head, keeping the rain off him. “You can keep the umbrella,” he said, then held out a hand.

Loki stared at the hand, trembling as Strange kept it outstretched. Slowly, but without malice, he said, “I don’t need your parlor tricks or your umbrella, Strange. What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to shake your hand,” Strange said. “You know, like a gesture of goodwill? I’m trying to say, I’m not going to keep you trapped at the Sanctum anymore.” He hesitated. “I never should have in the first place. Sometimes—” He stopped again, considering his words. “Sometimes, I let my job get in the way of seeing who people are.”

Loki’s spine felt locked in place, stiff and ramrod straight and—and what was he supposed to say to this? A flock of geese took off from the water and Loki watched as their V formation took shape. The rain seemed to lighten. And finally, he asked, “Is this because of your list? You trust me not to destroy reality because it struck me from its rolls?”

Strange shook his head. “No. It’s because—” But he stopped, looking thoughtful, and a shield that Loki was all too familiar with snapped down over his eyes. The good doctor very much didn’t want Loki to know what he was thinking, and he didn’t know if he found that fascinating or annoying. The possibility of not caring at all was obviously off the table. It was clear to him that when it came to Stephen Strange, his emotions, whether good or bad, ran high.

Finally, Strange met his eyes. “Before, you said I know you won’t risk harming your brother? You were right about that part. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, it’s that.”

The way he said it made Loki arch an eyebrow. “If you’ve learned _one_ thing about me?”

Strange chuckled. “Yeah. But it probably goes without saying that having you around has been…an educational experience.”

There was something crackling in the air between them for just a fraction of a moment, an electric second that Loki allowed himself to look past who he was dealing with.

He’d never been able to decide what color Strange’s eyes were. He’d never asked.

He certainly wasn’t going to ask now.

Relenting, Loki reached out and shook Strange’s hand. His palm felt different than he’d been expecting. Different from the other Strange, who, admittedly, Loki hadn’t spent a lot of time hand-in-hand with. But he remembered. The calluses were different and so was the tremor, just slightly, like it was on a different frequency. Was it Loki’s imagination, or did Strange’s scars look slightly straighter here, too?

With a start, he realized he’d been staring at their clasped hands, and he yanked his back. Too late. Strange wasn’t an idiot, and it was clear from his expression that he’d noticed.

“Well,” Loki said briskly, wrapping both of his hands tightly around the umbrella handle. “Good-bye then, Strange. Should we ever find ourselves on opposite sides of a fight, rest assured that our time together will have absolutely no bearing on how hard I’m trying to kill you.”

A sardonic smile flickered across Strange’s face. “And what if we find ourselves on the same side?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s likely, do you?” An answering smile flashed across his face, though, mischievous and biting. “But if we do, the same thing goes.”

Strange laughed—a genuine, delighted laugh, and Loki realized suddenly that he’d never heard the other Strange, the one he’d cared for, laugh quite like this. It was…not an unpleasant sound. “See you around, Loki,” Strange said as he circled an arm and opened a portal.

And then he was gone and Loki was alone, which was what he’d wanted to be in the first place. A gull cried as it skimmed over the water and Loki watched it, drawing the umbrella closer to himself. The rain fell harder as wind gusted. Manhattan was completely obscured by gray curtains of rain now, the Statue of Liberty nothing but an indistinct shape in the harbor.

He wished he’d been able to say good-bye to Jane. But it wasn’t his decision to make. The good-bye was hers to choose. And what she’d chosen was probably better than anything he would have, anyway. The cliffs where he’d finally found some peace with his father, the place that overlooked his people’s new home.

It was galling that Odin had treated her badly when she’d come to Asgard. Of the mortals he’d met, he knew of none more worthy than her of…well, anything. ‘Worthy’ was a loaded word for him, but she embodied it. That felt like a universal truth, somehow. She should have been born an Asgardian. Then again, perhaps it was the fact that she _wasn’t_ that made her this way.

The rain fell harder and he tried to let her go, even though he’d never let anything go in his life. If—when—he saw Thor again, he’d tell him that he understood. Yes, human lives were a heartbeat, but some of them did more with that heartbeat than many Asgardians, with their thousands of years, ever could.

Look at him. Giving humans credit. If that wasn’t character growth, then he didn’t know what was.

Loki ran a fingernail across the grain of the umbrella handle. It was well-worn and old, as far as these things went. Easy to imagine Strange as a much younger man wielding it against the rain as he traveled to and from university classes or shaking water off it on a subway platform. An unimportant piece of him, perhaps, but a piece, nonetheless. As a gesture, it should have been meaningless.

But Loki had long suspected that he was getting soft. So it wasn’t.

He pulled the phone out of his pocket, shielding it from the rain as best he could. Presumably he could call for another taxi on this thing. Or, what had Strange called it? Uber. Like a taxi, but for _millennials_ , since they didn’t have to talk to anyone. Loki hadn’t understood the joke. It was difficult not to suspect it hadn’t been a very good one.

The screen lit up and he opened the map, zooming out until he could see the entire world. Where should he go? Where did he _want_ to go?

Rain pattered on the umbrella, running off the tines in rivulets. He pressed the button that returned the map to his current position and watched it zoom back to North America, to the coast, to this city that he’d once tried to lay waste to. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t cared about laying waste to the city. That had all been collateral damage.

It was funny, now that he thought about it, that Strange had never mentioned that day. The _specifics_ of that day. He was a doctor, surely he’d seen victims of the attack? It was the sort of thing that Loki thought would make a good backstory for their eternal enmity: Strange, the doctor who’d operated on the innocents that Loki had sent to the emergency room. Hmph. He’d have to ask.

Wait—no. Why would he ask? Strange and he were done with each other. They weren’t ever going to see each other again. Or at least, if they did, it would be coincidence. There would be no casual questions, no trying to work out why he was the way he was. Insufferable, smug, obnoxious—Loki was happy to never see him again.

He tapped at the search bar in the map and typed in a letter at random. It didn’t matter where he went. So he’d choose the first thing that came up.

He’d hit ‘B.’ Which meant the first suggestion was 177A Bleecker Street.

Dammit.

Quickly, he hit another letter. ‘G,’ which brought up Greenwich Village. He glared at the phone. It was clearly cursed. Fine, then. He’d find a different way to choose. And then he would call an Uber and he would go there.

Tightening his grip around the umbrella handle, he began walking along the railing towards a building he could see in the distance. He’d simply ask someone where they were from. The first person he saw. And someday, he would set out from that place and he would reunite with his brother.

Abruptly, Loki stopped. His brother. His brother the do-gooder. Something was coming to this world. Sooner or later, there was going to be a fight. Thor would be involved. Strange, no doubt, would be involved. Would Loki?

No.

Oh, _gods._ Fine. Yes. Yes, he probably would be.

And since he was getting soft, it would be on the side of _good_. He rolled his eyes, not entirely at the concept. It was partly at himself, too, for continuing to play this part, the villain, the monster, when it had always fit as uneasily on him as any other role that he’d told himself he needed to play.

His eyes unfocused as he stared into the gray distance. So what role was he playing now? Who _was_ he? Loki of Asgard? Prince of Asgard? A son of Odin? Hero, villain, or something in between? Someone who fit nowhere and didn’t know what he wanted?

He was grounded by the past but untethered from the future. If he wanted to, he could go anywhere and be anything. If he wanted to, he didn’t even have to be Loki anymore. Wasn’t that what he’d always wanted? To stop being himself? To be someone else?

There had been times in his life when he would have given anything to not be who he was. Except he’d gotten the chance on Sakaar and he’d learned that it wasn’t what he wanted at all. He’d tried not being himself. It hadn’t stuck.

On _The Statesman,_ in the end, he’d been a hero. Not because he wanted to be, but because he couldn’t do anything else. Those were his people whom Thanos was slaughtering. The only thing he could do was fight for them. The only thing he could do was give himself up for Thor.

Nothing had happened to change that. He’d do it all over again.

Maybe he didn’t know who he was, exactly, but he knew _that._ And maybe, for now, that was good enough.

That still left him the problem of where he was going. With a slow exhale, Loki ran his thumb over the umbrella handle again. There _were_ still a couple people he knew in this city.


	12. Chapter 12

The Sanctum’s front door opened when he knocked on it, creaking slowly ajar like some sort of parody of one of the ghost stories he’d been told as a child. An ominous crack of thunder, a sinister footstep on the stairs. It was a dark and stormy night, _et cetera, ad nauseam_. He slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind him. No Strange or Wong. And silence. The foyer was even darker than normal with the rain outside.

He stood there dripping, water running off his clothes and the umbrella, which he’d folded up and propped on the floor. Was there any point in calling out? The door had opened to him. He was welcome. Why? What had he done to deserve that? He didn’t know. He _hated_ not knowing. Not knowing meant it was out of his control. If he didn’t know _why_ , then he couldn’t make anything happen. It meant he was at the mercy of others.

The thought made him snort resignedly. At the mercy of others. What was he but at the mercy of others? It was something he’d always despised. But suddenly, standing there, drenched, his hair frizzy and wet, water seeping under his leathers to his skin, it seemed less contemptible. He still didn’t _like_ it. But somehow, without him quite realizing it, the need to lash out, to throw himself against the confines of this prison, had burned away. It was like his own personal, mini-Ragnarok. He supposed he _had_ died, in a way.

And it had changed him. It remained to be seen whether the change had been for the better.

He conjured a fire in the study, not because he needed it to stay warm, but because it was nice. It was cozy. It made the Sanctum feel like a home instead of a big, empty house that had been a prison and now…wasn’t. Not that it was a home either, not for him, but it was currently the closest thing he had. The thought struck him again. He was welcome there. Welcome. _Him._ That was worth a lot.

His chest ached. It was worth more than he’d ever admit out loud.

Sitting in his wet leathers wasn’t comfortable, even if it didn’t pose him any particular danger, so he stripped them off and draped them over the radiator. His tunic was damp but dried quickly, and after some mental digging in his pocket dimension, he found a pair of cotton trousers that weren’t seasonally appropriate, but which were certainly preferable to sitting around in his undergarments.

There were enough books in this house to keep him occupied for years. Protective spells to be dismantled. The Chamber of Relics still to be explored. He was pretty certain that he’d noticed Óðrerir in one of the cases when he’d peeked inside and he didn’t think these wizards had the slightest idea that it was Asgardian, designed to hold the mead of poetry. He had no plans to tell them. Alone in the Sanctum, he could get started on any of these…projects.

Instead, he sat there, his legs curled underneath him, staring into the flames.

And that was the way Strange found him when he came in, saying, “Wong, I was thinking, what do you say we have Thai tonight? I know we just had it the other day, but I could really use a panang curry to warm me—” He stopped in the doorway, staring at Loki, and finished, “—up.” His expression, for one moment, was more open than Loki had ever seen it. Surprised. Shocked, even. A brief, unguarded flash of…happiness?

_That_ thought was terrifying. Loki pushed it aside and pretended he hadn’t seen it.

“Hi,” Strange said, his mask coming back down, an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth turning up.

There were a lot of things Loki could say. Perhaps the right way to say that was, there were a lot of things Loki could _ask,_ starting with, _Is it alright if I continue to stay here?_ But instead, he held Strange’s gaze and said, “I put your umbrella in the vestibule to dry.”

Strange took another step into the room, his eyes locked on Loki’s. “Thanks. But like I said, you didn’t need to return it.”

The fire cracked, spitting sparks into the room. Loki didn’t break the eye contact. Was he staring Strange down? Was this some sort of absurd display of dominance? Or was this something else, something that he wasn’t certain he had a name for?

Finally, Loki said, “Here’s the thing, Strange.” He hesitated. Admitting this out loud was probably a bad idea. But he didn’t have any good ones. “I have nowhere else to go. New Asgard is…not somewhere I want to be, even if circumstances allowed me to be there.”

“You’ve never even been,” Strange said, a gleam in his eye that Loki knew he was meant to catch.

With a snort, Loki replied, “No. Of course not.” But a smile twitched at Strange’s mouth and Loki wondered… _why._ Why didn’t Strange say anything about the fact that Loki had used the Tesseract? Why didn’t he say anything about him going to the one place in the world he’d been specifically forbidden to go to? Why was he so…well, pun entirely intended, _strange?_ Loki didn’t understand him. That was a change, he had to admit. At first, he’d thought he’d understood the human wizard all too well. But Strange was more complicated than Loki had given him credit for. And he thought he knew a thing or two about being complicated.

“May I ask you something, Doctor?” Loki asked, clasping his hands in his lap and looking down at them, finally breaking eye contact with Strange.

“Sure. Though I feel like you’d ask no matter what.”

Why did everyone keep saying that to him? As though he was a willful child who couldn’t control his tongue?

Perhaps it was fair. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Loki’s fingers tightened around each other. “My brother. Will there ever come a time that I can see him again?”

Strange came the rest of the way into the room and sat down. His hands trembled as he put them on the arms of the chair, sliding his palms along them. Loki held his breath.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure,”Strange said.

As Loki let his breath out in a slow exhale of relief that he didn’t want to admit to, Strange added, “No guarantees, though. When I looked into the future…I mean, I was concerned with one thing, and that was defeating Thanos. Everything else I saw, you have to understand, the further we get from that point, the more the possibilities branch. So there _are_ futures where you never see Thor again.”

“Not many of them, if I had to guess,” Loki said.

With a slight smile, Strange said, “Well. I’m sure you’ll take this the wrong way, but I don’t think there are many universes where the Sons of Odin don’t come as a package deal.”

“There _is_ no way to take that but the wrong one,” Loki sniffed. Then, he tilted his head at Strange. “What else did you see? What happens to _you?_ ”

An expression that Loki hadn’t expected to see flickered across Strange’s face. It looked like nothing so much as panic. He considered sneering something like, _What’s the matter, wizard, do you die gruesomely?_ Which would have been satisfying, if not particularly clever, but something stopped him. Finally, Strange waved a hand and said, “Same old same old. Keeping the mystical forces of evil at bay, protecting this reality, being devilishly handsome and charming.”

Despite himself, Loki laughed. “No surprises then.”

“Nope.” But there was that flicker of panic in his eyes again. Odd.

The two of them stared at each other. This was not quite awkward, but it was…new. “Listen,” Strange said. “We don’t have to be enemies.”

Loki regarded him, his eyes flicking from Strange’s head to his feet. How was he supposed to deal with this man? So, so similar to the Strange he’d known in the other universe. Indistinguishable, in many ways. But not the same.

With a small smile, Loki replied, “Are we enemies, Strange?”

Steadily, Strange said, “I don’t think we are. Do you?”

Looking away, furrowing his brow, staring to a distance and a future that he couldn’t see, Loki said quietly, “No.”

There was a long silence, so long that it ceased being a pause in the conversation and became an end to the conversation. A resolution, of sorts, if Loki was any good at resolutions. So they weren’t enemies. What did that make them? _Friends?_ Gods, _Norns_ , no. Loki could never be friends with this man. Of course, he wasn’t very good at being anyone’s friend, but that was beside the point. Not Strange. Never Strange. They weren’t enemies, then, and that would have to be enough.

He would ignore the fact that when Strange had come in and let that unguarded flicker of happiness show on his face, that he’d felt an answering echo of the same feeling.

No, on second thought, he wouldn’t ignore it. He’d simply attribute it to the fact that he’d cared for…alright, _fine_ , loved a different universe’s Strange. It was a reflex, nothing more. The emotional equivalent of hitting your knee and kicking out.

Neither of them spoke for so long that Loki went from stiff and awkward, wondering when Strange was going to leave, to grudgingly comfortable, content to sit with the wizard in silence and watch the fire. There was a faint smell in the room, something deep and woody. Pleasant. He thought it might be called sandalwood.

His tunic was dry now. It occurred to him that he’d never allowed Strange to see him in anything less than his full leathers. Looking good, looking like a prince, was a way to ward off vulnerability. So what did it mean that he was sitting in Strange’s study in what amounted to Asgardian loungewear, not feeling vulnerable, _not_ feeling exposed?

Reflex. Just reflex.

Strange shifted and raised a shaking hand to run it through his hair. “Hey,” he said. Loki looked at him. “I have to say something to you.”

Narrowing his eyes, Loki said, “Go on.”

Strange stared at him steadily. Funny that he had such a steady gaze when his hands were the opposite. “I didn’t mean Thor doesn’t need you.” At these words, Loki stiffened. Strange’s eyes took this in. The fact that Strange remembered that exchange was…surprising. Hadn’t it just been a passing comment for him? Maybe an attempt to get a rise out of Loki, but more likely just a casual observation from someone who’d seen the future. It was Strange’s job to guard this planet and this reality, which didn’t leave a lot of room for caring about people’s feelings.

“When I said that,” Strange went on, “it was…I didn’t say it right.” A flash of regret crossed his face. “I’ve seen Thor a couple times since I got Unsnapped. He needs something. It feels like that something might be his brother.”

Loki didn’t react to this at first. But finally, he smiled slightly and replied, “A kick in the arse, then. Like I’ve always said.”

Strange chuckled. “Yeah. Maybe.” He drew his eyebrows together. “You know, when you see each other again, it’s not going to be easy.”

“Things between my brother and me have never been easy,” Loki replied with a snort. This was a lie. Of course. But they hadn’t been easy for what felt like a long time. They’d both pushed each other away because of that. And then they’d faced it on _The Statesman_. And things had still been hard, but it was different. Loki wanted that back. He wanted to try. He wanted to feel like screaming but at the end of the day _not_ feel like burning everything down.

And when he saw Thor again, he knew things _would_ be hard. They’d be different. It was like Loki had done a magic trick, sleight of hand, _you saw me die, brother, but here I am!_ Abracadabra. Loki was waiting to see Thor again, but Thor thought he was gone. Not a very nice trick. Then again, none of Loki’s tricks were very nice.

No, it wouldn’t be easy. But the thing was…the thing was…

The thing was, the worst part about this was the waiting. When he finally saw Thor again, a little hard work wouldn’t be so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented, kudosed, and read this! Loki's post-Endgame adventures will continue 😊 
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**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/)! I like to talk about Loki.
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> Drop me a comment if you're enjoying this! I love to know what people think! Kudos are also greatly appreciated 😊


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